Category: Film Review

I’ve now come to expect something special from writer/director Ben Wheatley with each new film. In a short period of time, he’s unleashed Down Terrace, Kill List, Sightseers, and A Field In England, all movies that I feel are terrific pieces of cinema, and have totally confirmed him as one of the premiere filmmakers within his age group. His latest, the gloriously surreal and exceedingly stylish futurist satire High-Rise, takes him into Grand Guginol territory with flashes of sexual intrigue while overall presenting a wildly maniacal vibe to the proceedings. Based on J.G. Ballard’s famous and much-loved novel (which I’ve not read), my guess is that this film will be a very, very different viewing experience for those familiar with the source material than from those with no preconceived expectations. Being that I never, ever compare movies to books (one of the single most pointless endeavors that anyone could possibly waste their time with), I can only report about what I’ve seen with my two eyes in terms of the movie. I loved every, single depraved, erotic, disgusting moment of it. This will be a repellent film for some. For others, it’ll be exactly the kind of decadent showmanship that you’re looking for. This is an intense film, in every sense of the phrase, forcing the viewer into a constant stream of excess, never relenting for a moment.

Tom Hiddleston finally has a juicy role to call his own, sexy Sienna Miller is back in smoking-hot mode (with some peek-a-boo nudity for extra frustration), and the entire movie has been crafted with a sophisticated visual style that blends ingenious sound work with feverish cinematography by Laurie Rose. Jeremy Irons is the brilliant yet foolhardy architect who has constructed a mega apartment building that in essence works as its own self-contained environment. There’s a gym, a grocery store, a school, restaurants, and all the creature comforts you might expect in high-society living, with each level to the high-rise comprising a different sect of society; the higher up in the high-rise, the more wealthy the inhabitants. All hell breaks loose when a series of power failures hit the complex, resulting in a total breakdown of acceptable behavior. Feeling like a thematic cousin to Snowpiercer, Wheatley stuffs his film with a locked and loaded aesthetic, and as usual, the results are wholly cinematic and form pushing; coming on the heels of the hallucinatory A Field in England, his latest walk on the wild side seems like a logical next step, further cementing Wheatley’s anarchist social worldview. The up-for-anything supporting cast includes Sienna Guillory, Luke Evans, Elizabeth Moss, Keeley Hawes, Augustus Prew, Peter Ferdinando, and a totally debauched James Purefoy. I’ve seen the film twice in three days and I can already tell that this one will be binged – HARD – once it hits Blu-ray.

 

The Truman Show is easily one of the most disturbing and prophetic films of my lifetime. Directed with extreme care by Peter Weir (Witness, Picnic at Hanging Rock) and written by Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, Lord of War, Simone) who always seems one step ahead of everyone else, this is a genuinely sad film about stolen identity, the loss of innocence, the understanding of evil, and how one man decides to finally think and act for himself after years of bowing to the expected norm. Jim Carrey was absolutely brilliant (and probably never better) than he was here, subverting the silly-man image he had cultivated for a few years before dropping this dramatic bombshell during the summer of 1998. The fact that The Truman Show came out in the popcorn movie season, and grossed $130 million domestic after rapturous critical response, is still one of the coolest cinematic notions I can think of. Just think about it for a moment – a movie built on ideas becoming a huge success in the mostly brain dead, CGI summer movie landscape. It seems almost too good to be true. And I’m not so sure that this movie does that sort of business if it gets released this summer, or next summer. Both of the moment and completely ahead of its time, The Truman Show sought to expose the fraudulent nature of reality television in the darkest way possible, while skewering the notion of 15 minutes of fame, and seeking to examine the fallacies of every day life. Ed Harris was hypnotic in an Oscar nominated performance as the magician behind the scenes, calling all the shots in poor Truman’s life, and the way that he truly feels that he’s his father in the final act, and most especially in those heartbreaking and liberating final scenes, still creeps me out to this day.

Peter Biziou’s tricky and stylish cinematography took on a uniquely voyeuristic aesthetic, and Weir’s decisions to set the story in a bright and sunny and antiseptic seaside town as opposed to Niccol’s originally scripted rainy and nighttime and noir-ish NYC, was a stroke of visual and thematic genius. Take some of the most frightening emotional material ever conjured up and place it inside this friendly, sterile environment that would seem inviting to anyone. Dennis Gassner’s exquisite and duplicitous production design is worthy of intense study, as it’s always working to suppress the behind-the-scenes shenanigans while giving off a radiant, scarily friendly vibe. The concluding moments of this film with Truman heading up that perfectly surreal set of steps still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and the decision on the part of the filmmakers to smash cut to black in the exact fashion that they did will always remain one of the best storytelling decisions that I can think of. The absolutely insane supporting cast was an embarrassment of riches, including the stunningly beautiful Natascha McElhone, cocky-funny Paul Giamatti, the brilliant Laura Linney, everyone’s best buddy Noah Emmerich, Harry Shearer, and Philip Baker Hall. The ensemble was in total synch in this film, allowing Carrey and Harris to totally dominate, while still providing the film with warmth and edge where needed. Producer Scott Rudin first approached Brian De Palma (and then many others) to direct before hiring Weir, who has had one of the more bizarre careers I can think of. The absolute final shot of this work of art stings with such ironic humor that it hurts to laugh. This is one of the great existential films of the 1990’s, and a film that has only gained in its masterfulness as the years have progressed.

From the startling opening moments and continuing all throughout its entirely beguiling and metaphorical narrative, The Lobster presents us with another bizarre cinematic world from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (the Oscar nominated shock-fest Dogtooth and the funereal drama Alps), an emotional sadist who is constantly picking at his filmic subjects like itchy scabs, always trying to expose the raw and volatile relationship between humans and their fragile sensibilities. Co-written by Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou, this is true, absurdist, pitch-black comedy, with plot threads that will make you feel purposefully uncomfortable, which you then feel bad about laughing over. The only thing I’m not super keen on in Lanthimos’ decidedly bleak yet strangely hopeful worldview is his strange obsession with weird animal violence; not sure where all of that comes from, but it’s a recurring theme for him that’s very noticeable. Colin Farrell isn’t the first actor you think of when dry comedy is the order of the day, but he fits perfectly within this rigidly stylish film that continually subverts its own sense of pictorial precision with a story that’s alternately confounding and exhilarating. Lanthimos is a true original and I can safely say that his films feel like the creations of only himself, so it comes as no surprise that this bizarre film won the Grand Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and that so many big movie stars would jump at the chance to work with this brazen and unpredictable filmmaker.

The Lobster supposes a near-future where, by law, people must have a life companion. If you’re single, you’re sent to this ominous and ostentatious hotel that rests near the ocean, and you’re given 45 days to find a mate. And if you’re unsuccessful in your romantic quest, no worries, you’ll be turned into the animal of your choice, and released into the nearby woods, where you can look for love as a different species. If all of this sounds lunatic, well, it is, but it most certainly has a point of view in terms of relationships and societal expectations and honesty within the construct of partnership, and it basically serves as a corrective to the mindless crap that the Hollywood studios churn out on a weekly basis. Lanthimos recruited a starry cast for his first English language movie, including the magnificent Rachel Weisz, a priceless John C. Reilly, the brittle Olivia Colman, the uniquely photogenic Lea Seydoux, and a mysterious Ben Whishaw. Each shot by cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis feels formally perfect and in total synch with the sharp editing by Yorgos Mavropsaridis, the keep-you-on-edge musical jolts add a repeated sense of menace, and the way Lanthimos builds his entire creation to its haunting finale will keep you buzzing after the last frame has been exposed. I’ll certainly need to see this offbeat item again to unlock all of its secrets, but like the best of films, it’s begging me for an immediate revisit.

 

 

Rating in Stars: ***½ (out of ****)
Cast: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie
Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for extended sequences of violence, action and mayhem)
Running Time: 2:27
Release Date: 05/06/16

Captain America: Civil War sews doubt within the group of superheroes known as the Avengers for the first time since they became a collective attempting to overthrow an external conflict in the form of an alien villain with supernatural abilities. The second and clumsier time saw one of them creating the threat against which they were to fight by accident and ego, and now the consequences of the actions taken in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron have shown themselves with this new film. It is positioned as a direct sequel to the previous movies that included the character of the surtitle, but it really isn’t for a long time past somewhere in the second act. Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have quite a lot to juggle with this sequel, the latest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and in spite of the business, it’s a roaring entertainment.

There are more serious concerns here than the ones to which we are usually accustomed (often, though not always, limited to the introduction of a hero or heroes and the thrusting of them into a generic conflict). Here the conflict arises due to the machinations of a villain who has a specific–and, surprisingly and ultimately, sympathetic–goal to tear the Avengers apart from within. He is Baron Zemo (Daniel Brühl), a hardened former militant whose motivation to fight back against the heroes will not be revealed in this writing. Let’s just say that it’s central to the concerns that crop up in the first act. After a prologue in 1991 that introduces a biological weapon of MacGuffinish importance, there is an attack that forces one of our heroes to contain a blast, whose energy she can control with her mind, away from its intended target. It still ends in the deaths of a dozen peaceful people.

The central debate, says the Secretary of State (William Hurt, making his first appearance in the franchise since 2008’s The Incredible Hulk), is a largely a political one, exacerbated by measures taken by the United Nations to police the Avengers for good. The Sokovia Accords, named after the disaster that leveled an Eastern European city, are drafted. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), aka Captain America, is against regulation of this sort, believing that the collateral damage is an unfortunate necessity so as to eventually no longer necessitate it, and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr., very good), aka Iron Man, thinks the Accords are necessary to keep them in check. Battle lines are very literally drawn, but no one’s side is disregarded here. When “Bucky” Barnes (Sebastian Stan), aka the Winter Soldier, is framed for another explosion that results in yet more death, all bets are off.

The fact of the matter is that Steve probably has the more salient point in the matter, and later, he and Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), aka the Falcon, recruit the returning likes of Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), the energy-manipulating telekinetic who caused the first aforementioned explosion, Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), who comes equipped with his usual contingent of clever arrows, and Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), whose ability to shrink in size as his strength is multiplied seems oddly downplayed here. On side of Tony, who has increasingly personal stakes in the matter that ultimately define his motivation, are Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), the KGB agent whose persuasive ability is all but ignored this time around, James Rhodes/War Machine (Don Cheadle), Tony’s best friend and sidekick, and the Vision (Paul Bettany), the inexplicable fusing of Tony’s old, artificially-intelligent computer with an Infinity Stone.

There are a lot of characters–perhaps too many in the grand scheme of things, especially considering the niece of Steve’s old love interest, Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp), offers her support, some sort of official agent guy named Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) shows up to be present for stuff, and Cheadle, Rudd, and Renner all feel extraneous to the proceedings. They pale compared to the highlights of the new characters, such as an African prince named  T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), aka Black Panther, and Peter Parker (Tom Holland, whose performance is brief but fantastic), aka Spider-Man, a kid from Queens whom Tony has been investigating. These two in particular are given either a solid motivation (revenge for T’Challa) or moral compass (a clear-cut vision of right, wrong, and the answer to both for Peter).

It’s an overflowing ensemble given a healthy amount of time (nearer two-and-a-half hours than any film in the franchise so far) to find their footing, even if it doesn’t always pay dividends. The action is particularly well-mounted in an extended sequence of clashing egos that finds the heroes doing battle in an abandoned airport (Spider-Man in particular holds his own in this sequence). No one is truly in danger because their powers are about equal, but the screenwriters and directors Anthony and Joe Russo understand this, saving the action with genuine gravitas for an extended, three-way duel between characters who don’t truly want to win in such a permanent way. It’s the emotional charge of that particular scene, though, that mirrors the desire on the part of the filmmakers to set Captain America: Civil War apart in a series that has started to feel like a lot of the same old same-old. These are superheroes treated, where it counts, as separate entities who desperately need to sit down and talk–preferably without their suits.