SNOWDEN - BFI LFF 2016 - Day 12

Jyoti Kalyan reviews SNOWDEN:

If you have a basic understanding of Edward Snowden’s story, don’t expect to learn anything new by watching this dramatised version. Director Oliver Stone had everything to make this film thrilling by immersing audiences into the psyche of Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon Levitt ), a high level intelligence contractor who leaks millions of classified documents on how the NSA illegally spy on individuals without their consent or knowledge. There were opportunities for gripping audiences by exploring the moral battles being fought by US Intelligence workers, shedding light on the secret yet ‘legal’ Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts or even uncovering the power and influence possessed by those within the hierarchy of these organisations. However, what we do get is a film that touches interesting points but provides no depth.

Stone’s ‘dramatisation’ seems to hit its crescendo within the first five minutes, where we see Snowden locking himself in a hotel room with three hand-picked journalists, ready to hand over the secret documents. But, from then on, it is flat and dragged out. The recurring theme that US Intelligence Agencies spy on all of us is portrayed through many long-winded examples that it begins to bore the audience. The inclusion of Snowden’s girlfriend adds no value and is all too predictable, especially when focusing on the impact his job has on their relationship. As far as casting is concerned, for me no one stand out in the slightest, and let’s not even begin to delve into what Nicolas Cage is doing playing a mentor to potential intelligence agents.

The film does however end with an actual clip of Edward Snowden, conducting a public interview to a large audience from his new home in Russia. For me, this was a rare scene where you could actually get to know the character and should have been longer!

One should not forget that an incredible story underpins this movie. It is the ultimate David vs. Goliath battle which could have captivated millions of cinema-goers around the world. It is a shame Oliver Stone’s representation doesn’t do Snowden justice. You might just find Wikipedia’s version a lot more fun !

SNOWDEN has a running time of 134 minutes and is rated R. The movie played Toronto and London 2016.  The movie opened earlier this year in Israel, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Sweden, Turkey, the USA, Vietnam, Brazil, Germany, Croatia, Portugal, Finland, Lithuania, Denmark and Norway.  It opened earlier in October in Spain. It opens in Spain on October 7th, in France on November 2nd, in Greece on November 3rd, in Belgium on November 9th, in Poland on November 11th and in Italy on December 1st. 

BRIDGET JONES'S BABY

BRIDGET JONES'S BABY  is the latest instalment in the romantic-comedy franchise centred on the chubby klutzy Londoner (Renee Zellweger) trying to hook up with her real-life earnest Mr Darcy.  In this film, Bridget is 43 and has finally got her life in order - she has a great job, she's hit goal weight and she's quit smoking.  But after a one-night stand at a music festival with a billionaire dating app creator called Jack (Patrick Dempsey) and then with her former boyfriend Darcy (Colin Firth) she finds herself up the junction with no idea who the father is.  So follows a chamber comedy with both men turning up to sonograms and ante-natal classes, and the viewer waiting for the last act reveal of who the father is and who Bridg will end up marrying.

On the plus side, the movie is pretty harmless and contains enough laugh out loud moments to get you through the over-long two hour run-time.  Zellweger sells the physical comedy of being the relentlessly clumsy and awkward Bridget and Emma Thompson as her doctor provides the best laconic one-liners and disapproving looks.

But there are plenty of negatives too.  First off, there's a sub-plot about Bridget and her old-school journo chums being under threat from pretentious millennial hipsters who think old journalism is irrelevant. It's a strong story but goes nowhere. At no point is Bridget's job under threat from her being pregnant - at no point does she worry about what taking a year out of work will do to her career.  But of course she's not worried because - and this is the second point - this movie is deeply conservative and also, therefore, out of step with our times.  Because both of Bridget's potential partners are rich, well-educated, tall dark handsome men who will provide her with a house and financial support.  You can sense Emma Thompson's dissatisfaction with this as she inserts the only line regarding potentially raising the kid on her own - but that's all we get. There is no doubting the fact that we are going to end up at the altar, and that this is the appropriate aim for a single woman with a kid. 

The third problem with the film is Renee Zellweger's face. This has been much written about and is a controversial point - would a man face such a raft of negative press over bad plastic surgery and fillers? Maybe not.  But I wouldn't be giving an honest review if I didn't say that her face is distracting - especially given the fact that the movie chooses to show Renee as a younger less-interfered with woman in flashback scenes.  I spent to much time in the slower middle of this film trying to figure out what she'd done to herself and why. Contrast this with Emma Thompson who is ageing elegantly and beautifully. 

Despite my deep philosophical issues with this film, I did still have a good enough time watching it. But I'd suggest it as a dinner and DVD night film rather than something you have to rush to the cinema to see.

BRIDGET JONES'S BABY has a running time of 123 minutes and is rated R.  The movie is on global release.

VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN

Director Paul McGuigan (TV's Sherlock & Luke Cage) and screenwriter Max Landis (AMERICAN ULTRA) have attempted to do for the Frankenstein story what Guy Ritchie did for SHERLOCK HOLMES.  The resulting film is a partial success.  A grimy/glamorous Victorian London is beautifully recreated and photogaphed by DP Fabian Wagner (JUSTICE LEAGUE) and the acting from the two leads - James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe - gives the rather hokey story some emotional heft.  But the story is obviously hokey and whether you ultimately enjoy the film depends on how far you're willing to be be swept away by the production design and acting and ignore the rather weak attempts to broaden out the backstory of the Frankenstein legend and the fact that neither the script nor the delivery have the crackling wit that enlivened the SHERLOCK HOLMES reboot and winked at its more ludicrous excesses. In Max Landis' take, Frankenstein (McAvoy) is trying to recreate life because of his guilt in causing the death of his brother and to win back the respect of his father (Charles Dance.)  Radcliffe  plays his sidekick Igor. In this version, Igor is a circus clown rescued by Frankenstein - his back drained of pus in one of the movie's more absurd scenes - and given a Victorian extreme makeover.  The relationship is put under strain by Igor's greater moral qualms about resurrecting life and his love affair with Downton Abbey's Jessica Brown Findlay.  All of which has the makings of a proper tragic drama, in the manner of Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein film, but both director and writer want to make something more kinetic and funny, which mixed success.  

VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN has a running time of 110 minutes and is rated PG-13. The movie is on global release.

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here.

In late nineteenth century rural England a coquettish, strong-willed but ultimately kind young girl called Bathsheba Everdene rejects the earnest proposal of a good but apparently rather dull sheep-farmer called Gabriel Oak.  She goes on to inherit a large farm and surprises the county by running it herself, although relying very heavily on Oak's advice in his reduced position of shepherd.  Oak must watch guiltily fend off the proposals of the rich austere Mr Boldwood, to whom she has sent a valentine in a fit of pique little suspecting the deeply passionate and obsessive response it would provoke.  Worse still, both Oak and Boldwood have to watch her marry the feckless and cruel Sergeant Troy, a man who has already ruined the poor maid Fanny Robbin.

This is, of course, the story of Thomas Hardy's most famous novel, Far From The Madding Crowd, and the iconic 1967 film adaptation directed by John Schlesinger, starring Julie Christie as Bathsheba and Alan Bates, Peter Finch and Terence Stamp as her three lovers.  That film is so beloved and so well-acted and photographed that a remake felt almost superfluous, but I am pleased to report that it has its own charms.

THE GREAT GATSBY (2013)

Here's my one minute take on Baz Luhrman's GATSBY: it's something of an achievement to direct a movie that has such reverence to the source text, and yet misses the point so completely.

And of course, reverence for the text is perfectly correct. F Scott Fitzgerald's slim novel depicting the glitz and the loneliness of Jazz Age America is arguably the greatest American novel of all time, and certainly one of the greatest novels of all time period. It has an elegance and a depth that belies its brevity. The supreme tragedy of Gatsby is that he is a man who is desperately trying to be something that he can never authentically be - a man of inherited wealth - in order to win the love of the blue-blooded débutante Daisy.  But what we know, what Nick knows, is that Gatsby isn't really in love with Daisy.  She's just a cipher for his delusion that he can replay his youth - a youth blighted by his poverty and then parlayed into organised crime.  There's a sense - a much-needed and necessary sense - that while Gatsby knows that his lifestyle, his name, his means of earning  - are a lie - that he simultaneously totally believes the fiction. He is his own great work of art. 

Baz Luhrman's reverence for the text is literally writ large on the screen.  We see key phrases shown as written on the screen; the dialogue is almost entirely lifted directly from the novel; even key visual moments are taken from the book - such as the white drapes fluttering as Nick, our clear-eyed narrator,  first meets Daisy.  Luhrman even opens the movie out, giving it a framing device, wherein an older, jaded, alcoholic Nick (Tobey Maguire) is "automatic writing" his experiences with Gatsby and Daisy - and that written therapy will eventually become the novel, "The Great Gatsby".  And more fundamentally, with the exception of this framing device, the plot unfolds in the film exactly as it does in the novel.  Our young narrator Nick hires a humble cottage next to the extravagant mansion of the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby (Leonardo Dicaprio).  Gatsby's famous for throwing marvellous parties that he doesn't attend.  And we discover that he's throwing them as bait to lure Nick's now married cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) - his first love - and the woman he hopes to begin again with.  Meanwhile, Daisy's husband Tom (Joel Edgerton) is having an affair with a brassy, blowsy mechanic's wife (Isla Fisher) - an affair that casually exploits and manipulates the emotions of the mechanic, but also belies Tom's proprietorial feeling toward Daisy, and his innate distrust of Gatsby.  

And within that reverential depiction of the novel, there are certain scenes that work brilliantly well.  In particular, Luhrman and Dicaprio totally get that the first scene where Gatsby meets Daisy is funny - it's painfully, embarrassingly, gauche and physically funny in a way that Robert Redford and other Gatsby avatars have never been.  I also think that the visual depiction of the Valley Of Ashes was truly inspired and brought them to dingy, desperate life in a way that I didn't really get from the novel.  And in terms of performances, I think Joel Edgerton and Isla Fisher are superb and vital in smaller roles;  I was shocked by how effective the casting of Amitabh Bachchan as Meyer Wolfsheim was; Tobey Maguire is perfectly cast as the wide-eyed and yet not naive narrator; Carey Mulligan is suitably insipid although, if I were harsh, I would say that she doesn't quite get the quite whispering voice.  But this is really Leonardo Dicaprio's movie and the tragedy of this film is that in a quieter movie, his performance would be garnering Oscar buzz. As it is, you can't hear him above the sound of the Jay-Z.

So here's the problem with Gatsby. As much as Luhrman loves the text, he loves high-camp even more. Which  means that every scene gets Luhrmanned.  It moves, faster, brighter, louder, crazier than anything you've ever seen before. I lost count of the amount of times I was trying to look through things, or hear dialogue beneath music, to get at the performances.  It was like trying to watch a fundamentally great movie in a theatre filled with partying teenagers.  I guess the shock is that one might have thought that Luhrman's all-out glitz style might have worked in depicting the jazz age, but it just never seemed to coalesce. The sum of the parts drowned out the whole. 

THE GREAT GATSBY is rated PG-13 in the USA. It has a running time of 142 minutes.

THE GREAT GATSBY is on global release.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 8 - NEDS

The multi-talented Peter Mullan returns to directing with NEDS - a brutal but also darkly comic tale of a smart young kid turning to violence in 1970s Glasgow. The movie addresses head on issues of class prejudice, and the way in which the British education system fails its kids. John McGill starts off as a really smart, ambitious kid, but everything is stacked against him. His dad is a violent alcoholic; his elder brother is a juvenile delinquent; and because of that, he's consigned to a lower stream in school than he should be in. Still, he powers on, does well and is set for success. Problem is that in a summer where he has little to do, he falls in with the wrong crowd. And when faced with middle-class prejudice - people who expect him to be a Non-Educated Deliquent - his inner anger spills over and he gives them what he thinks they want. So follows a tale of self-sabotage stemming from deep, deep inner hurt. It's absolutely tragic to see a nice kid turn bad, partly because it's just incredibly difficult to escape inexorable social forces.

The film is beautifully filmed and Mark Lease's production design perfectly captures the 1970s working class atmosphere. And my word, seeing those kids being taught like that - those old fashioned classrooms, latin exercises and marks read out loud - it took me right back! Peter Mullan takes a basically unknown cast and coaxes performances that feel authentic, and his script is the perfect mix of harsh and light relief. My only critique is that the movie seems to have a natural ending about an hour and fifty minutes in, when the protagonist, deciding to turn himself around, finds himself in a remedial class in a portacabin, and has to face the consequences of his actions. But the movie carries on for another half hour. I can see why - it gives the movie a more definite ending - a more hopeful note in some ways - but I felt it was a bit redundant - a bit too leading us by the hand - literally! Still, for all that, NEDS is a powerful, and entertaining movie, despite the tough content, and definitely worth seeking out.

NEDS played Toronto and London 2010. It was released in Spain in December 2010 and will be released in the UK on January 21st.

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS

"We are all one trade from humility." Marv, WALL STREET.

WALL STREET (1987) - a movie that vocalised the mood of the time; gave birth to the world's greatest greedy capitalist bastard; and sent a population cohort into investment banking - that same cohort that by and large caused the global financial cluster-fuck whose ill effects we are still grappling with. A movie with a simple narrative; strong characters; and an innocence, almost, in retrospect, about what it was doing. Because make no mistake, WALL STREET, exposed something nasty and cut-throat, but oh so tempting, that was taking over corporate America.

Jump forward twenty years, and the world is a very, very different place. No disrespect to my mother, but even she can tell you why the credit crunch happened and has an opinion on the government sponsored bank bail-outs. Economic commentators from Nouriel Roubini to Gillian Tett have made reputations and fortunes explaining this crisis to the Ordinaries who are going to have to pay for it, maybe for the rest of their tax-paying lives. Bankers - their lifestyles, their economic power, their slippery ability to get a bail-out AND a bonus, still, still! - are out in the open. Even hedge fund managers have been exposed. And righteous anger runs forth.

Pity then, poor Oliver Stone, trying to bring a script to screen in a period when reality was over-taking even the most scandalous fictional depiction of high finance. A period, moreover, where every new book release - every new Rolling Stone magazine article - was beating him to the punch in exposing the corruption, greed and excess that led us to this Fall. By the time we got to Cannes 2010, what else was left to say? Was there, in short, an appetite, to see and be dazzled by the titans of finance when we were left in negative equity if we were lucky, and unemployed if we weren't? WALL STREET could surprise us, and tell us something we didn't know. WALL STREET 2 feels like a re-hash.

In short, WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS feels like a movie over-taken by events - a movie without a concrete idea of itself - without a clear idea of what it wants to say and what it wants to be.

But before we get to why it's such a mess - let's lay out its basic structure, post Cannes-2010-edits. (Spoilers follow.)

The movie plays in four acts. The first act sees a crypto-Lehman collapse, when the New York Fed, advised by the heads of her competitor banks, refuse to bail her out. As a consequence, the head of crypto-Lehmans (Frank Langella) tops himself, much to the horror of his mentee, a young energy prop trader called Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf). Jake is prompted to propose to his girlfriend Winnie Gekko (Carey Mulligan), estranged daughter of Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), and in doing so, starts meeting Gordon on the sly.  

In Act Two, there is little evidence YET of the fallout from the Lehman collapse - the jewellery still glitters as the money is still there. Jake is corrupted both by Gordon Gekko and his business enemy Bretton James (Josh Brolin), CEO of a crypto-Goldman Sachs. Jake brokers a reunion with Winnie in exchange for Gordon dishing the dirt on who let crypto-Lehmans fail - and uses that info. to screw over Bretton James on a trade. Such is the fucked up value system of Wall Street that James reacts by offering Jake a job. 

In Act Three, the corruption goes further. The systemic financial collapse is in full effect. Crypto-GS is suffering, as is Jake's mother - a nurse turned realtor. Jake's corruption continues - he connives with Gordon to free up Winnie's $100m trust fund, thinking he'll invest it in clean-tech. Gordon, being Gordon, takes the money to London, opens a hedge fund, and makes a cool billion. Winnie, pissed off with Jake for being suckered by her dad, dumps him. 

In Act Four, Jake, not learning, again tries to trade with Gekko - access to his grandson against giving the money back. Gekko being Gekko says no. And then, in what one can only assume to be a tacked on post-Cannes 2010 ending, Gekko has a last minute change of heart, gives back the money, and plays happy family with his kid and grandkid. Meanwhile, Bretton James has been exposed as trading on his own account against the bets of his clients, getting him sacked from crypto-GS and indicted by the SEC.

So what's really going on here? There are four strands to the story. Strand number one is a romance. A guy, with partially good intentions, lies to his girlfriend, is found out, loses her, but is forgiven. This strand really doesn't work. Shia LaBeouf doesn't have the emotional range, and poor Carey Mulligan is given nothing to do by the script other than look tearful. We're meant to think Jake is basically a good kid, but what kind of arsehole tries to trade money for pictures of his unborn child's ultrasound. Horribly misjudged. Utterly unconvincing.

The second strand of the story is a revenge thriller. This could've been great but is crowded out by all the other crap in the film. Revenge part one sees a young trader punk a slippery CEO. This really works, is thrilling and well explained. Revenge part two sees Gekko use Jake to expose Bretton James. This could've worked - it could've been the dramatic heart of the film - but it isn't given a chance. Truly, Josh Brolin's Bretton James - deeply good-looking and even more attractive when dripping with power - is as charismatic as Gekko ever was. But they have no real screen-time together. What we really needed was a show-down scene, but the skinny idiot Jake is always used as the go-between, undermining the power of the whole thing.

The third strand of the story is a coming-of-age drama. This should've been Jake Moore's story. He should've gone through shit and come out of it with self-knowledge - just like Bud Foxx in the original movie. But of course he doesn't, because there are no consequences to what he does. He screws up time and again, but is forgiven. He doesn't even serve time for the original market manipulation in Revenge Part One. Where is the scene with Jake Moore crying in the rain in Central Park? It gets worse. Not only does WALL STREET 2 refuse to let Jake Moore learn from his mistakes, but it even retro-fits Bud Foxx's narrative arc. Rather than serve time, come out and do something useful with his life, we see him in a cameo in the sequel, a self-made billionaire, dripping with hot chicks and as morally vacuous as ever. But it gets even worse than this. Jake Moore and Bud Foxx should've been changed by their experiences in the film, but Gordon Gekko shouldn't have been. Gekko does what he does because he can do no other - that is his tragedy. By tacking on a last minute emotional U-turn, the movie betrays Gekko and assumes the audience are a bunch of idiots who are going to buy it.

The fourth strand of the movie is a fictional recreation of real events. This is where the movie both succeeds and fails most. To its credit, WALL STREET 2 creates some amazing set pieces surrounding the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the creation of the TARP bail-outs. Set in the New York Fed, with a room full of bank CEOs and a crypto-Paulson and Geithner, we get a real sense of the panic and time-pressure involved in taking these momentous decisions typically over the course of a weekend to pre-empt the markets. The slippery reasoning, the desperation, the brutality of the survival instinct - it's all there. Frankly, I would've paid good money just to see Oliver Stone take us through a fictional recreation of these real events, without all the romantic, personal crap in this film. In particular, you have to love Eli Wallach as a crypto-GS founder, with his ruthless survival instinct and enigmatic whistle.

But it's also in its attempt to chronicle a period that WALL STREET 2 fails. And this is perhaps nobody's fault - insofar as the screenwriters were trying to hit a moving target. Still, all that aside, I can't help but think that the screenwriters made a fundamental mistake in trying to anchor their story in a long-term vendetta between Bretton James and Gordon Gekko that's basically about exposing insider trading. The whole point of the current crisis is that it wasn't by and large about illegal trades. Kerviel, Madoff etc are not actually the point. The real point is that these bankers weren't actually doing anything wrong, legally speaking. They were acting in a loosely regulated system, with perverse incentives, enabled by cheap central bank credit, and they ran riot. If this story were about a single rogue trader we simply wouldn't be in the global meltdown we're in. So to try to pin it on something personal, something basically quite petty, like trading on one's own account, is to basically miss the point.

Just as the genius of WALL STREET is best seen in the seminal keynote speech by Gordon Gekko, the failures of WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS are best expressed in the new keynote speech by Gordon Gekko. The big speech - far from being prescient and persuasive as in the first film - sounds old-hat and banal in the second. There are no witty one-liners - no startling sucker-punches. I can't remember a single line that stood out. In fact, the best one-liner that sums up the current situation comes from the FIRST movie, and is quoted at the head of this review. There is no feeling that we are seeing fundamental truths exposed and taboos broken. Worst of all, as if in embarrassment at the poverty of the content, Stone directs the scene like a kid with ADD. It's all jump cuts and shifting camera angles - hardly a sentence is completed. Poor, poor, poor.

In fact, Stone's direction in general is pretty poor. There are too many editing visual tricks - especially in the many mobile phone conversations - and cheap effects. Take for example a scene in which the camera rapidly moves down the length of a sky scraper as we here the sound effect of a ball in a roulette wheel - supposedly to symbolise the market crash. Crude. And perhaps most unforgivable is that Stone breaks the fourth wall. By that, I don't mean that he has the characters speaking to the audience face-on. But he does something stylistically as jarring. He acknowledges, within the world of the film, just how iconic the original movie has become. In other words, he induldges in cameos that serve no purpose other than to show how desperate celebrities are to be associated with the world of WALL STREET. So we get Warren Buffett, Graydon Carter, Jim Cramer, Nouriel Roubini, and a host of CNBC anchors playing along, winking at the audience, and worst of all, that Bud Foxx redux. This all smacks of not taking the project, and the audience, seriously.

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS is on global release.