AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is a histrionic family melodrama of little merit in which the performances are so extreme they verge on parody. Oh look, there's Meryl Streep which all her trademark physical ticks being a drunken, mean old cancer-ridden harridan, haranguing her family so cruelly that her alcoholic husband (Sam Shepard) tops himself.  It's hard to know whether it's the character who's so repulsive or Streep's "turn it up to eleven" performance, but for whatever reason seeing the old witch harassing her children made me want to leave the cinema.  And what of her children? Julia Roberts is doing some proper acting. We know this because she has generously allowed us to see her grey roots as she portrays a tired middle-aged mother struggling with her unhappy marriage in a haze of self-righteous anger.  Juliette Lewis is cast against type as the fragile, man-dependent, delusional ditz, and it's utterly unconvincing. Finally, we get some actress called Julianne Nicholson playing a shy wallflower quite implausibly attracted to her cousin Little Charles - played by the typically marvellous Benedict Cumberbatch only two notches shy of Simple Jack.   

This sack of unsympathetic, uninspired characters gather at the old witch's house for the funeral of her husband, as we would expect, all the seething resentments and nasty secrets come out.  I found the whole thing shouty and dull. The only real emotional truth came from a confrontation between Margo Martindale and Chris Cooper as the witch's sister and brother in law, arguing over their treatment of Simple Jack, sorry Little Charles.   The acting is otherwise over-done. The direction, from John Wells, plodding. The cinematography, by Adriano Goldman, often just technically bad. 

What's the problem here? We've had two marvellous movies recently based on plays by Tracy Letts - BUG and KILLER JOE. In both cases, the characters were outlandish and the plotting crazy but it somehow worked and seemed real in the context of the gonzo worlds the director, Billy Friedkin, had created.  Here, the director seems to rooted to a naturalistic setting, in which his characters seem like circus freaks.  There's a disconnect - are we meant to be taking this seriously? Are we meant to be laughing? It's disconcerting, but not in the way the play is meant to be disconcerting. What a waste of the on-screen talent!

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY played Toronto, Austin and AFI 2013 and was released last year in the USA, Israel and Brazil. It was released this month in Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Canada, Spain, Hungary and Kuwait. The movie was released this weekend in Singapore, the UK, Ireland, Iceland, Lithuania, Poland and Romania. It opens on January 30th in Italy and Macedonia; on February 5th in the Faroe Islands, Argentina and Denmark; on February 13th in Belgium; on February 26th in France, Hong Kong, Portugal, Finland and Sweden; on March 6th in Germany; on March 20th in the Netherlands and on April 18th in Japan.

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY has a running time of 121 minutes and is rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK for strong language. 

THE CALL

Brad Anderson, the director behind the surreal, bleak, stunning THE MACHINIST, descends into genre features for THE CALL - a thriller starring Halle Berry that starts off brilliantly but descends into implausibility.  In some ways, the movie is set up in the same way as OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN. In a thrilling prologue, 911 operator Jordan (Halle Berry) has to listen while a creep (Michael Eklund) offs a young caller.  Move to the main body of the film, and Jordan, like Gerard Butler's Banning, is a guilt-ridden specialist trying to redeem herself.  In this case, she's called in when the same creep abducts a young girl called Casey (Abigail Breslin) and puts her in the trunk of a car. The majority of the movie sees Jordan guiding Casey through tricksy attempts to alert passing drivers and the tension is palpable,thanks partly to DP Tom Yatsko's superb digital lensing, but mostly to the strong performances by Breslin and Berry.  The problem is that in the final act, the movie gets into Scooby Doo territory with the standard stupid chase in the spooky cabin in the woods that Whedon spoofed so brilliantly. 

THE CALL is on release in the USA, Russia, Canada and Lithuania. It opens on April 5th in Brazil; on April 18th in Argentina; on May 3rd in Sweden; on May 9th in Greece and on July 5th in Turkey.

THE CALL has a running time of 94 minutes and is rated R in the USA.

RANGO - Wonderful, radical, revolutionary

RANGO is a revelation. It is one of the best films I have seen this year, one of the best animated films since TOY STORY, and must surely raise the bar in terms of what is seen as appropriate material for a children's film, and the level of ambition one can bring to the visuals in an animated film. I wonder if history will judge it as revolutionary as AVATAR in terms of bringing the craft of cinema forward and - contra AVATAR - showing us just how dazzling and immersive visuals can be without 3D, but when the CGI animators are guided by one of the best cinematographers working today, Roger Deakins (TRUE GRIT, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN).

The movie has been put together by the team behind PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN - director Gore Verbinski and star Johnny Depp - and it's their best film to date - capturing the sheer energy and comedy of the original POTC film, but allying it to a stronger story and imbuing it with an indulgent love of cinema. For this is, above everything, a film for cineastes - a film about the joy of transformation - of being part of a story that you craft - and about living up to the Heroic Ideal. To that end, John Logan (GLADIATOR)'s screenplay leans heavily on the plot of 70s film noir, CHINATOWN, but lives in the shadow of all of those wonderful Clint Eastwood westerns, not to mention doffing its cap to FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and APOCALYPSE NOW among others.

Johnny Depp plays a pet lizard with no real friends but a vivid imagination. The lizard is the ultimate cinephile, indulging in wild cine-literate fantasies, but ultimately lonely and confused about who he really is. When a car accident leaves him wondering into a old western town in the Mojave desert, he takes the opportunity to reinvent himself as "Rango" - a gun-slinging hero along the lines of The Man With No Name. And boy does this town need a Hero. Some Evil man (obvious to anyone who's seen CHINATOWN) has been hoarding water, leaving the town to run dry, forcing humble farmers from their land....In order to sort this mess out, Rango has to over-come his fear, make good friends, and become a Real Hero, helped out by a wise armadillo (Al Molina) and a surreal dream featuring Timothy Olyphant as the Clint-like Spirit of the West.

What I love about Rango is its evident love for the genres it's referring to (in sharp contrast to the risible YOUR HIGHNESS) and its evident love for the textures of the western. I've never seen an animated film - typically full of shiny, bright, smooth CGI - look so dusty, weather-beaten and worn. The details of the fur, the clothes, the buildings is quite stunning and the film is drawn as if it really has been shot on old fashioned 35mm by the best cinematographer in the business. Add to that a story with real stakes and real emotional heart, voiced by actors at the top of their game. (Special mentions for Isla Fisher as Beans and Ned Beatty as the Mayor.) But most of all I love that this film neither patronises its young audience nor bores its adult audience - and yet doesn't pander to quick, cheap laughs with post-modern winks at popular culture - a trait I particularly detest in the SHREK films. Which other animated movie would dare to have a joke in which the word "thespians" is confused for "lesbians" - or a sequence in which the Hero cross-dresses?

All of this makes RANGO at once marvellously old-fashioned in its cinephilia, its textures and its wonderful photography, but also marvellously modern in its subversive adult humour and willingness to use surreal dream sequences. This really is a wonderful film - and one can only hope that other animated features rise to the challenge of matching its attention to detail and depth of vision.

RANGO is on global release in all bar Japan where it opens on September 23rd.

MY SISTER'S KEEPER - slippery

Not having read Jodi Picoult's book, and going purely by the trailers, I had thought that MY SISTER'S KEEPER would be a provocative courtroom drama examining the moral and legal issues around "savior siblings" - that is, children conceived in order to provide perfect match organs to their cancer-ridden siblings. But MY SISTER'S KEEPER isn't actually interested in the legal dilemma but the simpler story of a family under extraordinary emotional pressure. Yes, the other siblings may be taken for granted by their parents, but it isn't really the issue of organ-harvesting but a wider issue of just spending time with them. And the movie isn't so much about the ethics of taking organs from children who cannot consent, but about coming to terms with the fact that people die and not all battles can be won. In other words, this is a Weepie rather than an intellectual film.

To the extent that this movie wasn't a courtroom drama, I was disappointed. And I was rather annoyed at the slippery way in which this aspect of the movie was derailed. But then again, how credible was a courtroom drama really going to be given that Cameron Diaz is cast as the aggressively pro-organ donation lawyer-mother - a role beyond her ability - and Alec Baldwin (a prisoner of his 30 ROCK persona) was cast as opposing council. Only Joan Cusack, as a grieving mother and presiding Judge, adds any emotional weight and credibility to those scenes.

So how did the resulting emotional drama hold up? I didn't like a lot of the stylistic choices - particularly the voice-overs from the different characters explaining their points of view. (Although this is apparently a feature of the book). I especially didn't like the happy-family sunlit montages set to schmaltzy music. Jason Patric as the passive father looked mostly bored. Cameron Diaz as the aggressive mother looked mostly hysterical. Aunt Kelly looked entirely redundant. Ignored younger brother Jesse just looked mopey and is it me, or is Abigail Breslin just acting the same in all her films.? I feel she is over-exposed. The only thing that saved the story was the luminous lead performance from Sofia Vassilieva as the cancer-ridden teen, the touching evocation of her first and only romance with a fellow patient, and the realistic portrayal of her illness. This girl is definitely one to watch. I also applaud the writer-director for creating an ending that is, apparently, more realistic than that in the original novel.

MY SISTER'S KEEPER is on release in the UK, USA, Canada and Mexico. It opens next week in Iceland and Greece. It opens on July 30th in Australia and New Zealand; on August 6th in Slovakia; on August 13th in Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan; on August 21st in Romania, on August 27th in the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, and Bulgaria; on September 4th in Italy and Norway; on September August 9th in September; on September 17th in Portugal; on September 23rd in Belgium, Argentina, Brazil and Sweden; and on December 4th in Finland.

Random DVD Round-Up 2 - NO RESERVATIONS - formulaic rom-com bilge

NO RESERVATIONS is a deeply unexciting romantic comedy based on the much more nuanced German film MOSTLY MARTHA. Catherine Zeta Jones plays the highly-strung ambitious chef landed with her niece (the ubiquitous Abigail Breslin) after a family tragedy. Calculating boss Patricia Clarkson decides that CZJ can't cope with work and family and brings in boho chef Aaron Eckhart to take over. CZJ hates him. Then she loves him. And it all end schmaltzily ever after. A thousand feminists die. Philip Glass composes a typically over-bearing score.

NO RESERVATIONS squelched into theatres in summer 2007 and is available on DVD.

NIM'S ISLAND - heart-warming kids adventure

I didn't expect to have such a good time watching NIM'S ISLAND. I couldn't imagine Jodie Foster playing comedy - nor romantic comedy opposite Gerard "This is Sparta!" Butler. And the thought of Abigail Breslin as an abandoned child on a tropical island, doing a HOME ALONE against "invading" litter-bug tourists made me break out in hives. But what can I say? NIM'S ISLAND is a well-made, nicely acted, warm-hearted....just fun. Somehow it's plot contrivances didn't bother me. Maybe because the film-makers (the guys behind LITTLE MANHATTAN) took such pains with making the CGI blend seamlessly with the live action.

The plot is simple. Nim is a small girl living with her father - a marine biologist - on a tropical island. When her father is lost at sea, Nim asks her favourite adventure writer to come and rescue her. Unfortunately she discovers that Alex Rover is in fact a frightened, house-bound middle-aged woman. Still, Alexandra conquers her fears, forms a bond with Nim, and all ends happily. Awwww. Just go watch it. It's better than it sounds!

NIM'S ISLAND is on release in Australia, Romania, the US, France, the Philippines, Switzerland, Italy, Taiwan, Turkey, Thailand, Belgium, Russia, Singapore and the UK. It opens later in Iceland on May 16th; in Germany on June 19th; in Hungary on June 26th; in Argentina on July 17th; in Brazil and Mexico on July 18th; in Spain on July 25th; in the Netherlands on August 7th; and in Finland and Norway on September 26th.

DEFINITELY MAYBE - ho hum

DEFINITELY MAYBE is not a romantic comedy, as you might expect from the marketing campaign. Rather, it is a modestly enjoyable but perfectly forgettable drama about a rather bland but earnest young man and the three women he has loved. Ryan Reynolds tones down his trademark comic style to play political activist William Hayes, whose big plans for life scare off his high-school sweetheart (a deeply superficial performance from Elizabeth Banks). He then falls for a sophisticated writer who proceeds to skewer his career and his heart. Rachel Weisz is brilliant in this small role, and Kevin Kline is responsible for the only real humour and energy of the film as the outrageous Professor. Finally, our hero has an off-on friendship with a ditzy but well-meaning kid played by the charming Isla Fisher. They are both adorable together.

The movie rolls along at a leisurely pace and, with the exception of the college sweetheart, the characters are amiable enough to hold our interest for the run-time of the film, if not for one second more. The only real flaw in the film is the twee framing device, which has William relating his sexual adventures in flashback to an irritatingly knowing and cute daughter, played by Abigail Breslin.

DEFINITELY MAYBE is on release in the UK. It opens next week in Australia, the US, Norway and Venezuela. It opens in March in the Netherlands, Belgium, Mexico, Germany, Denmark and Turkey. It opens in April in Egypt, Singapore, Sweden and Spain. It opens in Brazil on May 9th and in Argentina and Russia on May 29th.

KEANE - brilliant method acting but ultimately alienating

KEANE is sadly not a movie about the brilliant central mid-fielder. It is, in fact, an ultra-low budget movie about a mentally ill man called William Keane, living in contemporary New York. Keane is played by Damian Lewis (the ginger from Band of Brothers) in a tour-de-force of minutely observed acting. And writer-director Lodge Kerrigan puts the audience smack in Keane's face. The movie is shot in an uncomfortable, claustrophobic hand-held close-up. We are right with Keane as he harangues commuters as to whether they have seen his daughter who was allegedly abducted six months previously. We follow Keane as he gets drunk, takes class A drugs, has casual sex and befriends a mother and her daughter who are living in his decrepit motel. His motives for befriending the young girl, played the precociously talented Abigail Breslin, are concerning.

Keane is not the sort of movie that you are supposed to enjoy. It is, I think, designed to make you empathise with people marginalised in society - and in particular a man who has become mentally ill through grieving....or whose grief is part of his mental illness. And the acting really is tremendous on the part of Lewis - a sort of actor's guide to utter conviction. My problem with the film is rather the writing of the part of the mother. She takes decisions that I find implausible and rather "Hollywood". For instance, she cautiously accepts a hundred dollars from Keane to help pay the rent. All well and good. She is suitably suspicious of his motives. Then she invites him to share take-out. Okay. Then he asks her to dance, as if we are at some 1950s tea-dance! And she says yes! Now, please, do we really think this sort of exchange is plausible? So, as hard as Lewis works to keep us with Lewis, the writing kept taking me out of it. Added to which the verite style is bloody hard work.

To my taste, I am far more likely to empathise and have my attention wrapt by a movie like TIDELAND or SPIDER, that takes me not just bang-smack in the face of a mentally ill person but actually inside his or her mind. To that end, I found Kerrigan's movie rather limited.

KEANE showed at Toronto 2004, Cannes and London 2005. KEANE has been on release on Region 1 DVD since March 2006. It received a limited cinematic release in France, the US and Greece in 2005 and opened in the UK yesterday.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE - more than just a brilliant black comedy

This review is posted by Nik, who can normally be found here:

I didn't think I'd enjoy this film, it sounded hackney'd. In fact, it sounded as hackney'd as a Hackney Cab, driving through Hackney, with a driver saying "wot about dem blacks - facking immigrints". A dysfunctional family goes on an impromptu roadtrip together to find themselves. Fuck me, why not just throw in Hugh Grant and make it a Rom Com? Can't Hollywood formulate something original?

Add to that the fact that Alan Arkin, Toni Colette, Steve Carrell and Greg Kinnear aren't exactly B-movie actors - and you have the potential for a sickeningly sweet, all-American flop of a movie. Suffice to say, despite the rave reviews at Sundance '06, I wasn't expecting to enjoy it much. I certainly couldn't have hoped to enjoy it as much as I did.

But I'm happy to say that LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE was just a great great movie - yet another triumph in the Bina-recommended Hall of Fame. Combine just some absolutely wonderful acting performances, especially the astonishing child part (Olive) played by Abigail Breslin - with a hilarious script - with some gripping insight into the American way of life - and you have the ingredients for a movie that will captivate you and keep you totally spellbound throughout.

I laughed all the way through - not sniggers or giggles - but hearty laughs that made my throat dry. Don't be fooled though - this isn't just a comedy. Far from it - it manages to capture the ridiculousness of life's tragedies - the emptiness of corporate America - the grotesqueness of the beauty pageant - the love of a sibling - the tenderness of a family. And it's as biting as it is funny. As well as that, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE really is a beautifully shot and beautifully made film - and although it doesn't claim any particularly deep insight about the world, or to have discovered anything new cinematographically - it is nevertheless a deeply satisfying and complete viewing experience.

I don't want to give away any of the plot in this review - this is a plot based film, one that I would almost be retiscent to buy on DVD for fear that it wouldn't be as good the fifth time - so you're just going to have to find out for yourselves. All I can say is that you won't regret it - even if you disagree with its insights, even if you cannot empathise with the situations the characters find themselves in - you'll surely enjoy the comedy, and even if you're humourless, you'll be able to sit back and admire the sheer quality of the acting and the script.

Take £10 from the cash machine, buy some popcorn, and go see this film with the rest of the change. Or if you live in London, take £20 out, and then follow the rest of the instructions.

And this from Bina007: I disagree that this is a beautifully made or shot film. It looks as cheap as it is. But, my god this is a funny movie and it has real balls too. Kudos to first-time feature writer and directors Michael Arndt, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Kudos too to all the cast, not least Paul Dano. He plays the brother in the family and gives an outstanding comic and dramatic performance despite the fact he doesn't speak for a lot of the movie. Like Nik said, go see it today!

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is currently on release in the US and France and opens in the UK on Friday. It opens in Italy on Sep 22nd, Finland on Sep 29th, Belgium on Oct 11th, Argentina & Australia on Oct 12th, Spain & Brazil on Oct 20th, Netherlands on Oct 26th and in Germany on Nov 30th.