Category: Film Review

Perfect Sense is a stylish, unnerving, and very underrated sort-of-apocalyptic drama/thriller with a very unique hook: Suddenly, everyone on the planet begins to have a meltdown of their collective senses. Everything that we take for granted, every single day, gets thrown into chaos; unexpected fits of rage, compulsive eating, spontaneous deafness, lack of ability to taste, and sudden blindness. Directed with extreme care and control by the interesting and talented filmmaker David Mackenzie (Starred Up, Spread, the upcoming and awesome sounding Comancheria from the writer of Sicario), Perfect Sense was an IFC release that went totally under the radar a few years ago, but it’s worth seeking out for its distinctive premise within a well-traveled subgenre, and to watch the riveting performances from Ewan Macgregor and Eva Green. They play a newly formed romantic couple who experience the strange and unprompted physiological breakdowns, and to watch them spiral out of control in front of each other feels oddly personal and all together surreal at times. The final moments of the film sting with intended irony and there’s a level of intensity to be found throughout this entire film that helps to ratchet up the emotional and visceral tension, especially during the numerous scenes of people suffering the sensory breakdowns. The sleek cinematography is courtesy of Giles Nuttgens and the chilling musical score was supplied by Max Richter. This is a very tough film to sum up in words, but trust me, I don’t think there are too many other films like this one out there, and if there are, I’d love to know about them.

 

Thanks again to A24, we’ve been given another excellent film. The End of the Tour focuses on a long weekend in the life of deceased author David Foster Wallace, whose 1996 novel, Infinite Jest, became a literary sensation and cultural touchstone for an entire generation. Bolstered by two terrific performances by Jason Segel (as Wallace) and Jesse Eisenberg (as then Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky), the film has been confidently directed by James Ponsoldt (who previously helmed the strong indies Smashed and The Spectacular Now) and sensitively written by Donald Margulies, who based his script on Lipsky’s best-selling memoir Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself. The action covers the period of time where Lipsky stayed at Wallace’s house, conducting a lengthy interview, in the aftermath of the Infinite Jest publicity and success. The film is very talky, very literate, very smart, and most of all, very sad, as death hangs over the entire film, and the wintry setting sets an immediately chilly tone that suggests isolation and mental despair. Wallace was a man who reportedly suffered some intense personal demons, and while this film is nothing like a traditional biopic, you definitely get the sense, in only an hour and 40 minutes, that he had a lot of inner turmoil to sort out, with feelings of inadequacy and self-resentment. But as played by Segel, he was also a man capable of great friendship, compassion (love the dogs), and keen humanistic understanding, able to decipher life’s strangest moments and put them into a thoughtfully arranged flow of words. Eisenberg does classic Eisenberg here, and as always, there’s something going on in those shifty and potentially deceiving eyes; he’s also the sort of actor who can really make dialogue sing. And because this film is almost solely dependent on its script, it needed to be strong, and the work here by Margulies is nothing short of beautiful, with line and after line hitting with dramatic force and resonating with poignancy. Visually, the film is solid if a bit solemn, but that was likely a creative decision; the flat, mid-America landscape seems a perfect atmospheric highlight. Danny Elfman’s score is unobtrusive but always effective.

 

Fascinating, challenging, and totally not for those without patience and an interest in 70’s style filmmaking aesthetics and storytelling techniques, Kenneth Lonergan’s almost-never-released multi-character drama Margaret is a film that many don’t even know exists, and that’s truly a shame, because it’s as compelling and as powerful as cinema can get. Originally scheduled for release in 2007 but inexplicably shelved until 2011, Margaret is one of those movies that’s likely to appeal to viewers looking for an almost novelistic approach to their movies, as the film bounces around from place to place, person to person, which creates an Altman-esque tableaux of individual moments which begin to combine into something profound and touching. Lonergan’s lone previous directorial credit, You Can Count On Me, was a perfectly observed indie dramedy with black humor and lots of heart, featuring some stellar turns from Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, and Matthew Broderick. Whereas that film was small and intimate, with Margaret, he went large, and the results are no less impressive, but what’s important to note is that his sense of the small and personal didn’t dissipate with his sophomore directorial outing. Featuring a volcanic lead performance from Anna Paquin (never better, and I’m not the biggest fan overall), the film centers on a tragic city-bus accident and the aftermath that it creates. It’s a story about guilt, grief, acceptance, and finally, forgiveness, and nothing about the narrative is easy or simple. The film utilizes an Altman-esque sound design with tons of overlapping dialogue; Lonergan’s decision to also have the casual conversations of extras and peripheral characters audible on the soundtrack and audible to the main characters further heightens the anxious mood and frenzied atmosphere of this engrossing tapestry of people and events and places and emotions. The superb Mark Ruffalo pops up in yet another soul-searching supporting turn, and the film is enlivened with the likes of Matt Damon, Allison Janney, Kieran Culkin, Rosemarie DeWitt, Matthew Broderick, Olivia Thirlby, and Lonergan himself. We’ll never know exactly what happened behind the scenes with this film. The oft-rumored “Scorsese-Schoonmaker Cut” would certainly be interesting to see, but what we’re left with is a film of enormous ambition, a multilayered magnum opus from one of the best, most underappreciated voices that Hollywood has come across in years. Note: version screened was the 186 minute director’s cut.

 

Masterpiece. I loved every single moment of this brilliant piece of work. I viewed this film once, roughly 25 years ago, and it went way over my head. Not this time. Yet another reminder of how skilled Hal Ashby was as a director. This is an endlessly funny, heartfelt, and genuine piece of work, a film that dips into the spiritual towards the end without ever being preachy or overly sentimental. The final shot and final spoken line of dialogue were note-perfect. Peter Sellers was extraordinary as Chance the Gardner, and everyone around him provided wonderful supporting work, especially Shirley MacLaine and Melvyn Douglas. Caleb Deschanel’s fantastic and darkly lit cinematography stressed wide master shots as opposed to an overabundance of close-ups, and as a result, one is left with a sense of the grand (especially when inside of that obscenely large mansion) while the screenplay stressed the intimate. As usual for an Ashby film, the tone was a perfectly calibrated mixture of quirky, dark comedy and straight forward drama, while Jerzy Kosinski’s wise and graceful screenplay, which he adapted from his own novel with uncredited assistance from Robert C. Jones, provided all of the characters with exceptional individual scenes and more than once chance to provide some big moments. This film is so sensitively observed at almost every turn, and it’s easy to see why it has inspired so many other films that have come after it; the Forrest Gump connection was something that sprung to mind very early, as the naiveté on the part of Sellers’ character seemed to be some sort of direct inspiration. There are so many fantastic bits in this film: Sellers leaving his house for the first time to the jazzy tune of Eumir Deodato’s remix of Also sprach Zarathustra and having any number of interesting encounters; the dryly hilarious meeting Sellers has with Jack Warden (portraying a flummoxed President of the United States); the entire subplot of various government agencies and media members trying to find background info on Sellers; MacLaine having a go with herself on that bearskin rug with Sellers passively watching TV in the background. I could go on and on with this film, as every scene felt true and correct, even with the overall plot straining credibility at times. But I didn’t care about that; the heart and soul of this movie is what makes it special. And in only two scenes, a crazy amount of Ruth Attaway POWER – her speech in the lobby of that long-stay hotel stung with piercing wit. Viewed via Blu-ray, and the transfer was spotless.

I’m always wholly fascinated by this film, and it’s something I feel that’s worth revisiting every year because of how it uses aesthetics to drive the plot. Boarding Gate is genre-hopper Olivier Assayas (Carlos, Summer Hours, Irma Vep) doing a sort-of-Michael Mann-esque anti-thriller that’s more cerebral than crammed with action. It’s the kind of low-key head-scratcher that doesn’t make any ripples in the theaters, but that people end up discovering at home. It’s a naughty little film, with some kinky sex and bloody gun-play, all steeped in the traditions of the femme fatale and international crime noir. Not as interested in coherent plot developments or definitive answers, Boarding Gate operates in an almost dream-like state which heightens the actions of its sleazy characters. But what makes the film worth watching has more to do with what it doesn’t do, then what it does do.

Asia Argento is Sandra, an ex-call girl with a history of drug problems and a taste for S&M. She’s working a legit job in Paris for some sort of international importer/exporter, while also conducting shady drug deals on the side. Her old lover, Miles (Michael Madsen), also happens to be her ex-pimp; the two have a very, very sordid past. She meets up with Miles again and it’s clear that there is still some heat between the two of them. What Miles doesn’t know is that Sandra is also carrying on an affair with her boss, the quietly mysterious Lester (Carl Ng), who runs his company with his wife Sue (Kelly Lin), who may be up to more than she lets on. Someone gets murdered and Sandra flees to Beijing, where she settles on the idea of opening some sort of nightclub. I may be missing something but that might be due to the way certain events in this film are explained. As the film nears its conclusion, Boarding Gate builds to an almost certainly grim finale; what finally transpires will be a surprise for most viewers.

Assayas is most interested in style, tone, ambiguous characters, and the chance to photograph his sexy leading lady in black lace panties while she brandishes a pistol. The fun that Assayas has with the ingredients of crime noir is presented right from the beginning. Argento, not the world’s most amazing actress, has a clear-cut physical confidence in front of a camera that is cold, hard, and real. In this respect, it’s not far off from the work done by Rebecca Romijn in Brian De Palma’s masterpiece Femme Fatale. Argento’s dialogue, much of which is delivered in a gravelly whisper, is heavy with symbolism and often feels a bit portentous. She pouts her lips, tilts her head, and genuinely looks like she’d be up for just about anything. She’s a true femme fatale that De Palma or Hitchcock would love. Madsen, who never met a slime-ball character he couldn’t ace in his sleep, is perfectly cast as Miles, a guy who’ll never be able to keep his shit straight. One scene between the two of them, involving oral sex and a leather belt, is perverted and hysterical in equal measure, while also being rather titillating. Cinematographer Yorick Le Saux bathes the film in hot, bright light that illuminates interiors with a slick, almost ghostly glow. And because the film operates in such a tentative mind-set with the characters making frantic decisions, there is a purposefully messy quality to the narrative that is both liberating and potentially frustrating to the viewer.

There were times when I wished I better understood what was going on during Boarding Gate, yet, I can’t honestly say I was ever truly confused or annoyed by Assayas’ deliberately opaque style. The film is more about what happens in between the big moments dictated by the necessity of plot, and less about the more obvious instances of action or spectacle. But the film’s final moments, which I totally loved, really sealed the deal for me. The ending of Boarding Gate might anger some viewers who are looking for a more overtly satisfying emotional conclusion to the story. It was here when I got the feeling that Assayas was attempting to channel the tone and mood of a Michael Mann film. This is a fun, dangerous, sexy thriller that’s well worth checking out. Available in America on DVD and streaming platforms; a Region B Blu ray is available from Amazon UK.