FIRST MAN

Damien Chazelle's FIRST MAN is a superb return to form after the mis-step that was LA LA LAND.  He tells the story of Neil Armstrong's moon-walk with a series of strong directorial choices that create a very intimate, almost melancholy picture that nonetheless manages to be literally awesome as we step onto the lunar surface. It's a film that's assured, mature, and emotionally resonant while never being mawkish. One can just imagine what this project might have been like in someone like Spielberg's hands.

As the film opens, Neil and Janet Armstrong (Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy) are coming to terms with the imminent death of their little girl Karen from cancer.  Neil - a talented engineer and test pilot - applies for NASA's Gemini space programme almost as a distraction.  The couple and their 5 year old son will have to move town, and it will be, in Janet's words "a new adventure". As the years and test flights progress, we come to know and feel a camaraderie with Neil and his colleagues.  They all seem to live close by to each other, and when fatalities occur, they share that pain.  This film invites us to share not only Neil's journey but also that of his wife - apparently she really did drive to Mission Control to demand their turn her squawk box back on during a particularly perilous flight!  The impression we get is that Neil was always a pretty buttoned up guy - that he channelled his grief into his work - and found talking to his kids about the chances of him not coming back pretty hard. 

The beautiful thing is that these home-life scenes of quiet melancholy lay the foundations of the emotional payoff on the moon.  Those scenes are absolutely breathtaking - and even though we know the outcome - they still manage to be tense.  The first moment when we switch from the Super-16 grainy footage from Earth to the IMAX footage on the moon is a truly WOW! spectacle. But even then, there's something deeply personal and even introspective about it. The camera is on Neil's helmet - and so his reflected shadow on the moon - and we see him just take a moment to take it all in.  There's then a beautiful personal moment (apparently fictionalised but at this point who cares) that perfectly caps all that has come before.  And then we're home.

The result is a very moving film that pays tribute to the men who sacrificed their lives and didn't make it - and a film that does what I LOVE - which is to briefly but effectively open up its focus to events outside the bubble - to show the controversy of spending so much money on the space programme during a contentious war. It's also a film that uses music beautiful - whether weaving in the Armstrong's beloved but whacky theramin-heavy space track - or subtly referencing Kubrick with a waltz as a space-ship docks. 

FIRST MAN is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 141 minutes. It is on release in the USA and UK.

GONE GIRL

GONE GIRL isn’t as frightening or as visually inventive as David Fincher’s previous films. It doesn’t deliver that gut-punch head-fuck of brilliance that stays with you over repeated viewings. The movie, though technically accomplished, doesn’t push the envelope technically or strike one as self-consciously modern. Worse still, it’s a movie based on a bizarrely popular and intensely badly written thriller by Gillian Flynn - a book so bad at the sentence level I only forced myself to read it to inform this review. The poor quality source material hampers Fincher in two ways. First, even those who haven’t read the book probably know whodunnit and how. Second, even with all of Fincher’s intelligence brought to bear, there are certain leaps of faith and improbability that trouble the careful viewer.

For the very few out there who don’t know, however, GONE GIRL is a contemporary thriller centred on the married couple Nick and Amy Dunne. They fall in love and marry but years later they have descended into mutual dissatisfaction - something that we might at first believe is caused by financial difficulties after they both lose their jobs and move back to Missouri, making Amy a fish out of water. However, as book-readers will know, the conceit of the novel and film is that for the first half both Nick and X are unreliable narrators. It turns out that he is adulterous and selfish and that she has a history of seeking extravagantly worked out revenge on men who get in her way.

What carries this movie is the central performance of Rosamund Pike who has to play five shades of her character: the young girl who falls for the handsome writer; the disaffected and calculating housewife; the frumpy “gone girl” on the lam; the ultra-glamorous Sharon-Stone-esque murderer; and finally the icy cold but contained returned wife. At each stage, even thought we know what happens next, we are captivated by her narcissism, cruelty and slipperiness. It’s just plain impressive to see her alter her physicality and demeanour to encompass the roles.

Sadly everyone else in the film is just reflective paper for her to work off of. Affleck and Carrie Coons are credible and just fine as the twins upon whom the accusations of murder fall. Missi Pyle is just fine as the by now cinematic cliche of shamelessly ratings-seeking muck-raking journalist. And Tyler Perry is - well - himself. The most ill-used actor is however Neil Patrick Harris as Amy's obsessive high school boyfriend Desi. He’s just a cartoonish stalker in a classy suit. I mean, there was something melodramatically over the top and stupid about his final scenes, but was anyone still taking it seriously at that point? If so, only because of Rosamund Pike.

Ultimately, the film is worth watching. It’s compelling and well-made. Will it be remembered among Fincher’s cannon? No. It cannot surprise the rather thin and trite finger-pointing at the media and the decidedly implausible plot. But I guess at least Hollywood knows who to turn to when it comes to the inevitable BASIC INSTINCT remake.

GONE GIRL has a running time of 149 minutes and is rated R. It is on global release.

Ankle frack round up 3 - WE BOUGHT A ZOO

WE BOUGHT A ZOO is Cameron Crowe's first film since the mawkish, embarrassing ELIZABETHTOWN, and I'm afraid that it's another flabby sentimental film in which the central characters do not hold our interest. Based on a script by Aline Brosh McKenna (27 WEDDINGS) the movie sees a recently widowed journalist pour his family's money into a neglected zoo. Everything is utterly predictable.  There's an angry exchange that provides catharsis for the father and his teenage son.  There's flirtation with bankruptcy before a triumphant reopening of the zoo. There's a mean government inspector, a cute vet love-interest for the dad, a cute vet's niece love-interest for the son, and an attempt to put some bite into the mix with a sarcastic older brother.  The material is hokey as hell, but I couldn't help wonder if different casting might have helped - and direction toward broader humour. Perhaps Ben Stiller and Amy Adams  as the father and vet rather than Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansen? 

I despair that Crowe will ever again direct anything with the emotional depth, narrative sophistication, dark undertones, and genuine heart (as opposed to manufactured schmaltz) of ALMOST FAMOUS.

WE BOUGHT A ZOO was released in winter 2011/2012 and is now available to rent and own.

WRISTCUTTERS - Slight but enjoyable slip of an indie movie

In some ways, WRISTCUTTERS is everything its name promises. It's a quirky and not very serious take on a very serious topic. Yet the movie does manage to challenge some of your expectations. For example, it isn't just about wristcutters. It's also about self electrocuting musicians, depressed kids with a fondness for rope and a whole range of other characters not so enamored of this little world of ours. As punishment, they all end up in a place that might be purgatory or something a lot like it. It's a depressed world where no one can smile and everything is even more miserable than the real world and it's populated entirely with people who have committed suicide. Imagine trying to fall in love in that screwed up world.

Our characters, quirky and endearing indie movie types, manage it pretty well. Our protagonists, Patrick Fugit (playing the befuddled introvert these movies insist on) and the very pretty Shannyn Sossamon play their parts well. There are more charming and memorable characters though, including the Russian with the admirably bleak worldview, a throat singing Eskimo girl and a mysterious chap that Tom Waits shows up to play. Yet the best part of Wristcutters is its hokey but fun initial premise. The world in which the movie is set is appropriately bizzare and taking in its contours and meeting its characters and anticipating the curves it throws out is the best part of the movie. The movie is mostly convincing in its initial conceit and there is a great deal of absurd humor to keep you engaged. Overall, WRISTCUTTERS is a slight but enjoyable little movie that says absolutely nothing about suicide even as it mines it for uncomfortable but real laughs.

WRISTCUTTERS played Sundance and many other festivals. It goes on limited release in the US in August 2007.

THE MOGULS/THE AMATEURS - promises kookiness, delivers the commonplace

THE MOGULS is a feel-good comedy about a bunch of small-town losers who band together to make a feature-length porno and thus achieve something with their lives. The comedy relies on having a bunch of ordinary schmucks sitting around mama's house eating jell-o talking about lesbian sex. This appealed to my juvenile sense of humour for around half an hour and then I got mildly annoyed that the movie was turning out to be just another schmaltzy feel-good losers-do-well movie. It's like THE FULL MONTY but with tanned Hollywood stars - not least Jeff Bridges, William Fichtner, Tim Blake-Nelson and Ted Danson - less profundity and less jokes. In fact there is only one cast iron joke. The Fichtner character asks the Bridges character for a job on the movie - not too much work - just so he can stand around and watch stuff happen. Bridges makes him the Executive Producer. Apart from that, it's all pretty run-of-the-mill and I feel vaguely disappointed that in this day and age a closeted homosexual is still deemed comic fodder. So this is probably a movie to miss, or at most rent on DVD.

THE MOGULS went on limited release in the UK yesterday. It is known as THE AMATEURS in the US.