DUMB MONEY*

There is a really good movie to be made about the Gamestop sage, but DUMB MONEY is not it. Directed by Craig Gillespie (I, TONYA) and written by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, the movie aspires to be THE BIG SHORT but has none of its wit, its deep understanding of financial markets, or its sheer dynamism. I didn't laugh once. I didn't learn anything. And more than that I got increasingly angry at the film's inability to tackle the real issues at stake, or to actually get the point. In fact, I think DUMB MONEY may be the most wrong-headed, dumb film I have watched in a long while.

Now, full disclosure, this blog used to be called Movie Reviews For Greedy Capitalist Bastards. And maybe I know more than the average movie goer about how financial markets work. But that isn't the point. Films like MARGIN CALL and THE BIG SHORT did great work in taking complex financial issues and interrogating them clearly and even-handedly.  But instead of having the balls to be nuanced, what Gillespie gives us is a fake David vs Goliath story, with pantomime villains and a very bizarre take on what a hero is. I think the result is morally questionable, and certainly not entertaining.

So let's go back to the beginning.  Keith Gill (Paul Dano) starts off as a little known retail investor in the US stock market.  He decides that Gamestop is undervalued, and explains why in a little-watched youtube channel. At the start I think he was in earnest. He believed he had found Deep Fucking Value in a retailer that was oversold on fears of e-commerce. I have no issue with him at this point. Then he started gaining traction on a Reddit channel called Wall Street Bets and I think it went to his head.  He realised that not only was he pumping up the value of his recommended stock, but that he could actually get it up to a level where he could punish the big hedge funds that were betting against the stock - the kind of folks that had refused to hire him all those years.

What the film should have asked is at what point our supposed hero of the little man realised the stock price had gone beyond Deep Fucking Value to Fair Value (on his reckoning) and then to Over Valued.  Even allowing for some kids still liking to buy actual hard copy games, did he really believe a value of >$100 was fair? And if he did not, then continuing to pump up the stock was just as nefarious as the institutional investors he and his dumb money disciples said they were fighting against. If we had seen any of this moral questioning, Paul Dano might have actually had something to do worthy of his talent. 

But this film isn't actually interested in asking the hard questions about Gill.  And it sure isn't interested in asking the hard questions about the toxic online culture he was part of.  There are a couple of throwaway lines that dismiss the misogyny, racism and generally 4Chan nastiness as a "few bad apples". Riiiiight. That toxicity and populist fact-opposed bullshit is exactly why a bunch of normal ordinary people lost their savings in this meme-stock insanity. Shouldn't the film have asked if Gill had any remorse?

No, the bad guys here are the evil hedge funds and the tech guys who invented Robinhood, a commission-free trading platform. Never mind that the Hedgie (Seth Rogen) made a conviction bet just like Gill, but did not pump the stock artificially - he just sat back for years waiting for e-commerce and bad management to do its work. I do indeed blame the Robinhood folk for switching off trades when they couldn't post margin.  But the film actually let's them off rather lightly, over-excited about getting Sebastian Stan to do a Sean Parker in THE SOCIAL NETWORK-lite cameo.  The film also seems to imply in its end credits that somehow Nick Griffin at Citadel (Nick Offerman - excellently understated) got away with nefarious influence over Robinhood. Maybe if charges weren't posted it's because there wasn't a case? 

I just can't take a film seriously that doesn't have its basic thesis straight. These meme stock traders were not heroes who started a revolution, as the end credits argue.  They were literally dumb money that didn't invest but gambled, refused to close out their positions out of greed, and lost their shirts.  To argue that they are somehow the righteous Davids, inherently morally better than the evil Goliaths, is nonsense. 

DUMB MONEY is rated R and has a running time of 105 minutes. It played Toronto 2023 and is now on global release.

THE FABELMANS**

Hollywood  loves a movie about movies so THE FABELMANS will probably win a ton of Oscars. Michelle Williams gives one of those Oscar-bait performances that's big and tortured and involves her crying for at least fifty percent of the movie in a performance that felt really mannered and fake to me.  This kind of torpedoes the whole film for me, and even without that it's just dull. It's actually worse than AMSTERDAM, which I watched on the same day, because while AMSTERDAM was incoherent, it at least contained flashes of brilliance. By contrast THE FABELMANS is far better made. It's coherent, it's well acted, it looks great, it's just a polished grown-up film. But it's so dull and predictable and blah.  It's just the same old story Spielberg always tells - about the loss of childhood innocence and the trauma of divorce - usually featuring a station wagon and a cute kid sister -  except this time in the guise of a biopic rather than an adventure film. 

The movie focusses on the marriage of Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi (Williams). He's a really decent guy, with increasing corporate success. But she's a frustrated concert pianist who spends the entire film battling depression and in love with Burt's best friend Bernie (Seth Rogen).  Her unhappiness dominates the family dynamic and puts unrealistic pressure on their son Sammy (Gabriel Labelle) to pursue his dreams of film-making: he is told by both his grand-uncle and Bernie that if he doesn't pursue his art he will break his and his mother's heart.

So the other half of the movie is seeing Spielberg, sorry Sammy, come of age in a school rife with anti-semitism, and make his first tentative steps into the film industry. Contrast the straightforward, polished, frictionless, lifeless way in which prejudice is treated here versus the grungy, nasty, altogether more impactful way in which it is depicted in AMSTERDAM.  At one point in a high school scene I felt the jocks were about to break out into a song and dance number, a la WEST SIDE STORY.

This is the problem with Spielberg. Even when telling the story of his own life he can't avoid smoothing over all of the spiky edges and making something soupy and syrupy and glossy.  

THE FABELMANS is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 151 minutes.

YOUTH - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Nine

Oh man. Paolo Sorrentino’s IL DIVO is arguably the best movie I’ve ever watched at a film festival, and it’s the only one I loved so much I watched it twice. And his last movie, THE GREAT BEAUTY, was a work of magical visual beauty and deep melancholic investigation into ageing and art. So I came to his first ever English language film with great expectations. Expectations that were, with the exception of a few flashes of brilliance, disappointed. There are two over-riding reasons for this: first a chronic lack of narrative drive and energy; second, uneven tone that undermines rather than enhances the whole.

LOVE & MERCY

LOVE & MERCY is a beautifully directed and acted biopic of the legendary musician Brian Wilson. Directed by Bill Pohlad from a script by Oren Movermen (RAMPART), the movie is sensitive, deeply felt and cleverly constructed.  It weaves together a narrative from two parts of Wilson's turbulent life. In the first period of the mid-60s we meet the Beach Boys as global superstars selling a myth of ever-happy sunshine-drenched California living.  But Brian, who writes and crucially arranges all of the music, is feeling hemmed in by the pressure to be up-beat and what's to create a perfect album with complex harmonies, dubbing and influences. It's the album that's going to become PET SOUNDS.  The music press loves to create fatuous lists of the all-time greatest albums of all time, but I've always felt that PET SOUNDS really is one of those seminal albums - arguably the best of the 60s, and just seeing it being created in the studio is one of the joys of this film.  But it's bittersweet because you're also seeing Brian's fellow band-mates/brothers push against his need to take them into darker more complex territory, as well as his first experimentation with drugs and slow slide into a kind of mental breakdown that's going to lead him to spending two years in bed in the 70s.  Paul Dano is absolutely fantastic in this role.  Both the mental slide and the precision producing feel authentic. In fact, this feels like one of the best films to document how music is actually produced. 

In the second time-period, we see Brian (John Cusack) in the mid-80s, under the malign influence of Dr Feelgood aka Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti) and started to date his future wife Melinda (Elizabeth Banks).  Brian's the same sweet soul and off illegal highs but Landy's got him under complete control with over-medication and sheer emotional terrorism. What's fascinating is seeing how that terror is echoed in his stories of his childhood with an abusive father who continues to screw him over financially despite the Beach Boys sacking his as manager.  But it's Giamatti who's the real villain of the piece, fluctuating between oleaginous charm and sinister control as he tries to break Brian and Melinda up and squeeze yet another album out of his financial cash-cow.

The central performances in this film are outstanding - Dano deserves some kind of award. But the production as a whole is just perfection. I love the way both timelines are inter-cut to contrast and enhance the consistent themes in Brian's life - the mental illness, controlling men, musical genius almost painful to live with. The aural landscape is also superlative. Not just the fact that we see iconic tracks created in front of us, but the way in which the film takes us into Brian's aural world and how the over-sensitivity to voice and sounds in his head leads to his breakdown. It's as thought the famous overlapping harmonies and melodies in the Beach Boys music merges into an inescapable and sinister soundtrack to life that's unbearable. The resulting film is compassionate, intricate and ultimately uplifting.  It's the film that Brian Wilson deserves.

LOVE & MERCY played Toronto 2014 and Berlin and SXSW 2015. It is currently on release in the UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Singapore, Kuwait, France, Spain and Ireland. It opens later in July in Portugal and South Korea. It opens in August in Japan, Greece, Israel, Sweden and Turkey.

LOOPER

Oh dear.  I very much admired Rian Johnson's neo-noir debut, BRICK, and loved the style if not the substance of BROTHERS BLOOM.  But his third feature, LOOPER, is to my mind the most over-rated film of 2012.  Now, I realise that it is not Johnson's fault that the marketing department called his film the MATRIX of our times.  No film was likely to live up to that billing.  But LOOPER is so intellectually and emotionally disappointing that the blame must lie with Johnson as much as with the PR department.

The central conceit has promise.  In 2044, the USA is a decrepit ex-superpower, its people impoverished, its currency debased, beholden to China.  Joseph Gordon Levitt plays Joe, a contract killer who dispatches men sent back by the mafia from 2074, where time travel has been invented but also outlawed. This exposition is deftly handled and the key emotional problem set up: Joe has to kill his future self to fulfil his contract, but his future self is desperate to live.  Both trapped in 2044, Future Joe tries to assassinate the child who will become the mafia kingpin in 2074 - the child that the yoiung Joe has become emotionally attached to.

There are three problems with this film.  The first is that the events of the film violate the rules of time travel as set up by Rian Johnson.  (There's a brilliant article explaining why in the Huffpost.)  Admittedly, Johnson admits this failing, giving 2044 mob boss Abe a throwaway line telling Joe, and us, not to worry about it lest our "brains get fried".  This is all well and good in a movie that is emotionally gripping - the audience will willingly suspend disbelief when their heart is engaged.  But in LOOPER that just isn't the case.

That's because, just as the movie has set up its intriguing premise, it suddenly takes a left turn from sci-fi into paedophobic horror, with the little kid who will become the 2074  mob boss behaving like something from THE OMEN.  He has telekinetic powers you see - a random conceit that was mentioned in the first five minutes of the film and then completely forgotten about until Johnson had written himself into a hole.  In other words, LOOPER isn't a sophisticated well thought out sci-fi thriller along the lines of THE MATRIX, or TWELVE MONKEYS, but two halves of two films, both of which show promise, but neither of which is particularly well developed.

But the absolute killer - the thing that absolutely ruined the movie - that made it jump the shark, was the casting, acting, and editing that made the little kid with TK powers an  object of absurd comedy.  It's hinted at that he killed his mum in a TK rage, he is preternaturally smart and emotionally sophisticated and utters his lines with such an implausibly earnest air that everyone was laughing at him in the screening I attended.  The movie had just lost all credibility.  And with no emotional stakes, the supposedly big emotional ending had no force whatsoever. 

The upshot is that LOOPER is not a movie that lives up to sci-fi greats like THE MATRIX or time travel greats like TWELVE MONKEYS.  It doesn't even live up to SOURCE CODE or MOON.  

(Insert cheap time travel joke about me never getting back those two hours of my life.) 

LOOPER played Toronto 2012 and is currently on release in Australia, Croatia, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, New Zealand, Russia, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Bulgaria, Mexico, the UK and USA.  LOOPER opens on October 12th on Argentina, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Singapore, India, Norway, and Turkey. It opens on October 19th in Chile, Slovenia and Spain.  It opens on October 31st in Belgium, France, Finland and Poland; on November 29th in the Netherlands and Taiwan; in Taiwan on November 30th; in South Africa on December 14th; in Japan on January 12th and in Italy on January 31st.

Sundance London 2012 - FOR ELLEN

So Yong Kim's anaemic "drama" is a cinematic dead end, in which very little happens and I cared even less. The first hour of this short 90 minute flick forces unto spend time with a feckless loser called Joby  (Paul Dano) a wannabe rocker and deadbeat dad who's suddenly realised that he's about to lose custody of his kid and is looking for everyone else to fix a situation he's gotten himself into.  But even that description sounds too energetic for a film that doesn't deign to trade in mere dialogue and narrative arc. The only thing the poor viewer has to cling on to is e occasional flash of humour and awkwardness from Jon Heder (NAPOLEON DYNAMITE) as Joby's lawyer.  By the time we see Joby interact with his kid, the Ellen of the title, there's precious little screen time left, and we really get is crass sentimentality. I really can't find anything redeeming in this entire exercise.

FOR ELLEN played Sundance, Berlin and Sundance London 2012. The run-time is 94 minutes.

London Film Fest Day 2010 Day 7 - MEEK'S CUTOFF

Meek's Cutoff is a real-life trail in Oregon, originally followed by Stephen Meek in 1845. He led a group of pioneers down that route, losing many to dehydration, but eventually helped open up Western Oregon with his trail. In director Kelly Reichardt's (WENDY AND LUCY) movie the story is stripped down and pared back. Rather than hundreds of pioneers we have three families, and rather than epic confrontations with Native Americans we have a single dramatic relationship. Lost, desperate for water, the pioneers capture a lone Native American, and force him to lead them to water. This confrontation brings out the worst prejudices of Meek, and the paranoia of some of the women who have been brought up on vicious tales. But it also brings out the essential decency and courage of Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams) - the moral and emotional heart of the tale. The ultimate idea of the movie is subversive. The trail is named after Stephen Meek, and the pioneers are much to be admired, but as the movie progresses the captive becomes captor. He is still bound up by the pioneers, but they are completely dependent on him to find water and to survive.

I find Kelly Reichardt's films alienating. I find the stillness, the quietude, disturbing and, ultimately, dull. I admire the beautiful cinematography and the acting - but it's a kind of abstract admiration. I suspect that audiences will either love this film - for its visuals and its central idea - or hate it - for its silence, and its oblique ending. I am glad I watched it, even if I didn't really enjoy it. I admire the project, if not the product.

MEEK'S CUTOFF played Venice and Toronto 2010. It does not yet have a commercial release date.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE - weather with you

Spike Jonze, the visionary director behind BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and ADAPTATION, returns to the big screen with an adaptation of Maurice Sendak's iconic children's book. The book is slight, dark but also joyful: a little boy called Max throws a tantrum, is sent to his room, and disappears into an imaginary world of wild things. The wild rumpus if fun, but he grows lonely and returns home in time for his supper, which is still hot! BBC Radio 4 produced a marvellous programme on the book and its iconic status, interviewing Sendak. He said he thought the book was radical because Max wasn't a WASP but a little Jewish kid, and because Max wasn't a classic innocent child but a realistic rage-filled, energy-filled little boy. And after all, he had it both ways - King in his imaginary world, but also welcomed back into his home.

Spike Jonze and writer David Eggers have taken the slender meat in the book and spun it out into a beautifully rendered, overwhelmingly dark and pyschologically truthful film about the fears and resentments of childhood. In truth, there isn't much joy left in it, and I'm not sure what kids will make of it. But for adults, the film is a deeply emotionally affecting depiction of what it's like to be a child, and indeed, the pressures on parents in a modern world of working parents and divorce.

The first hour of the film gives us the reality of little Max (Max Records), a nine year old kid growing up in the snowy American burbs. His elder sister is too busy being a teen to hang with him, his working mum (Catherine Keener) tries her best to give him attention but has her own stress to deal with. He loves mischief - instigating a snowball fight with his sister's friends - but gets scared when the fight gets out of control and they smash his igloo. The film is full of visual references to kids seeking small dark places to hide and feel safe in, but that safety being intruded upon. It's also full of play fights that have real emotional consequences. In these early scenes, I love the efficiency with which Jonze and Eggers essay Max's emotional life. The fight that triggers his running away comes out of nowhere. I also love the freedom of the camera, capturing with handheld the rumpus, but also shooting from Max's POV and height. There's a lovely scene where Max is sitting under his mum's desk tugging at her tights - a wonderfully intimate moment but also hinting at his need to express himself and incapability of doing so with words.

By the second half hour, Max has run away from his house having thrown a tantrum and bitten his mother on the shoulder - a highly charged scene. He takes a boat and through scary waves, lands in the land of the wild things. There he meets a loose collective of monsters and becomes their king, starting play-fights that soon sour. All of these monsters are expressions of Max's own insecurities and fears - the fear of not fitting in, of being abandoned for cooler friends, of not being understood, of not being loved, of sadness. The fear that doing a robot dance won't make his mum happy and won't make the monsters happy either.

I love this section for its wonderful visual style. When Carol (James Gandolfini) takes Max to see his model world, it really is magical. There's a kind of magic to the simple mastery of making and doing rather than CGI wizardry. That translates to the monsters themselves. They are giant muppets that have been ever so lightly CGI animated to show the facial expressions of the actors voicing them. It's a really wonderful result - they look real, they have weight, but they also look, well, muppety enough to have come from a kids imagination. I also love the wry humour. Classic example: Max and Carol are walking through a desert and an absolutely enormous monster appears on the horizon. Carol dismisses it as a harmless pup: "don't feed it or he'll follow you around." But there's no denying that this section is also pretty much a constant downer. The monsters talk like a bunch of depressed characters from a Woody Allen film, filled with neuroses about failed relationships and low self-esteem. They speak in phrases that kids must hear and not quite understand. They have an abiding sadness that poor Max can't shift because, after all, he's not a real king.

In the final section, emotions come to a head. Some of the monsters realise that Max favours KW and Carol - that's he not an equal opps king. And then they realise that he's not really a king at all. And then, most crucially, as Max tries to convince KW about the need for family and why she should return "home" to Carol, he also realises that he too needs to go home. What is learned? Maybe not much. Max always loved his mum, and still has trouble expressing himself. The rage and the fear are still there.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is a brave, bold and beautifully imagined movie that takes us into the psyche of a kid who has trouble expressing himself. Is it a kids film? Not sure. But it is certainly a superb film about being a kid, and about being a parent. It is uncompromising, challenging, dark, scary and makes you cry. Spike Jonze remains one of the most fascinating directors working today.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE was released in October in the USA, Canada and Italy. It was released in November in the Ukraine, Malaysia, the Czech Republic and Romania. It is currently on release in Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Denmark, Lithuania, Norway, Turkey, the UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Spain. It opens on December 30th in Belgium. It opens in January in Brazil, Singapore, Finland, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Japan, Argentina, Greece, Portugal, Venezuela and Sweden. It opens on February 4th in Russia.

London Film Fest Day 13 - TAKING WOODSTOCK

TAKING WOODSTOCK sees Ang Lee, director of tense, beautiful tragic romances - LUST, CAUTION and BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - take a step back into gentle comedy. The resulting film is warm-hearted, earnest, occasionally funny, but also somewhat ramshackle, meandering and ultimately, unsatisfying. Interesting characters are given too little screen time in an ensemble film, uninteresting characters are left to over-act wildly, and the third act acid trip is a complete waste of half an hour. Maybe the problem is that Ang Lee doesn't quite have the conviction he needs to make a film about a famous concert that IS NOT a concert film. He wants to tell the story of the family who's run-down motel became the HQ of the organisers and the impact the festival had on them. He wants to make a point about Woodstock being, for most people, about the journey there and the people you met, rather than the concert itself. But Ang Lee does cave in and gives us his protagonist journeying toward the mainstage and getting dragged into acid trips and mud-slides. It's just too much of a tease! Either focus on the motel, or give us the concert, but don't flail around in the mud!

The movie starts of well. We have a likable protagonist called Elliot - a sweet kid, who's compromising on his dream of going to San Francisco because he's helping out on his parent's run-down motel in the Catskills and because he can't quite admit that he's gay. Faced with foreclosure, he decides to invite the Woodstock festival to relocate to his parents' motel and his neighbour's land, when the folks in that town rescind the permit, scared of thousands of freaks showing up. Before you know it, the cash is rolling in and Elliot's conservative parents are surrounded with hippies and beats. Both they, and Elliot, experience many-splendored life, and then the festival rolls of out town.

The period setting and casting are absolutely spot on, with the exception of rather broad performances from Emile Hirsch as Billy and Dan Fogler as Devon, the Earthlight Player. Imelda Staunton and Henry Goodman are particularly good as Elliot's rather flummoxed parents, and Demetri Martin is affable and congenial as Elliot. But the two most interesting characters get way too little screen time. The first is Eugene Levy in a fairly straight performance as farmer Max Yasgur, the guy who actually rented out his fields to the festival. Why was such a provincial farmer so very liberal minded? Fascinating, but unexplored. The second fascinating, but too little explored character, was Vilma, a former US marine turned transvestite, played by Liev Schreiber. What a wonderful character! And what a fascinating nascent relationship with Elliot's father! I would have loved to spend more time with them. But instead we get Ang Lee trying, very clumsily, to speak to Vietnam in the form of the cliche of a battle-traumatised Vietnam vet, and to speak to the counter-culture in the form of a completely pointless acid trip. And when Ang Lee tries to create some real dramatic tension with a final act revelation involving Elliot's mother, it all seems out of tone with the rest of the film. Shame.

TAKING WOODSTOCK played Cannes 2009. It opened earlier this year in the US, Australia, Canada, Sweden, the USA, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Estonia, France and Spain. It is currently on release in Hong Kong, Israel, Singapore, India, Italy, Taiwan, Belgium and Greece. It opens in the UK on November 6th, in Argentina and Mexico on December 10th and in Brazil on January 15th 2010.

Overlooked DVD of the month - THE EMPEROR'S CLUB

THE EMPEROR'S CLUB has much the same setting and set-up as DEAD POET'S SOCIETY but it is a very different film. It lacks DPS's beautiful visual style, emotional heft and moral certainty. The result is a film that is only interesting to look at insofar as it captures the New England prep school as the English like to imagine it. (A sad result given that the DP was the excellent Lajos Koltai.) In terms of pure entertainment, Kevin Kline's finely modulated performance as a deeply repressed Classics teacher is no match for Robin Williams' charismatic poetry don. Kline's Professor Hundert believes utterly in the virtues of his school: Williams' John Keating is a maverick. Hundert's students are, for the most part, a bunch of indistinct swots. Keating's students have their own stories and personalities.

For all that, THE EMPEROR'S CLUB remans a fascinating film precisely because it eschews sentiment and clear answers. Professor Hundert believes in virtue but he is no paragon. His own romantic view of the power of good teaching to reform the class clown leads him to compromise his ideals. He throws the young ruffian an opportunity to reform at the expense of a more worthy pupil. The ruffian repays him by cheating. They point is not, however, the boy's inability to change, even in adulthood, but the teacher's reaction to it. When quietly nudged by the headmaster, Professor Hundert refuses to expose the well-connected boy as a cheat.

What we have here is a quietly played moral drama that provokes serious discussion. Doctor007 and I were talking about for the equivalent of the run-time of the movie. Can character be reformed? Was Hundert right to intervene? How far does this sort of thing go on all the time, in an era when schools and universities are even more dependent on legacies? The perils of benevolent interference are clear in this film, and you look at our foreign policy and you realise how widely applicable these questions are.

So, THE EMPEROR'S CLUB may fail as a technical achievement, but as a provocative drama it certainly succeeds. Moreover, it's always a joy to see Kevin Kline given centre stage.

THE EMPEROR'S CLUB played Toronto 2002 and was released later that year. It is available on DVD.

LA diary day 1 - THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Right now LA is sunny but cold and I'm in town for a few days on business. It's a perfect chance to check out some historic cinemas and some new releases that haven't made it to the UK yet. It's perfect testament to the almost visceral impact of THERE WILL BE BLOOD that I was transfixed by it, despite the fact that I'd just come off a 13 hour flight and was running on nearly 24 hours without sleep. (In fairness, the fact that the Arclight on Sunset Boulevard is super-plush, has killer hot dogs and great coffee also helped, and I was pleasantly surpised to see I was paying just $12 as opposed to $25 in London! Seriously, thanks to the dollar depreciation stuff in LA is basically free now.)

Paul Thomas Anderson's new film is, like 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS, a movie that leaves you breathless with its completeness of vision. Every single aspect of the movie has been carefully thought out and the complete work fills you with renewed excitement about the power of the medium. The cinematography, by long-term collaborator Robert Elswit, is great. Just look at the scene where Day-Lewis is silhouetted against burning oil wells at dusk. The production design places us authentically in the grit and grime of the California oil rush of the early 1900s. More than all of this, technically, the supreme achievement of this film is it's sound design. Jonny Greenwood of RADIOHEAD fame provides a score that feels like Ligetti or Bartok. It's insistent, dissonant and jarring, and almost replaces dialogue as the explanatory aural medium for the film.

Daniel Day-Lewis lives and breathes the enigmatic oil man Daniel Plainview. He advertises himself as a plain speaking family man bringing riches to the poor farmers. In reality he is a misanthrope and arch-manipulator. He speaks with an accent from a history book - some say modelled on John Huston. He is mesmerising. The first fifteen minutes of the film see Plainview find his first mineral mine, and then bringing his first wells on-line. There is little dialogue. Plainview seems to succeed by pure force of will, and brutally brushes of any accidental deaths inherent in the dangerous business of prospecting.

After this prologue we meet Plainview in 1911 as he charms his way into ownership of vast oil reserves. He meets his nemesis in a young kid with delusions of being a faith healer. Paul Dano plays Eli Sunday as an irritating over-confident nuisance. Some critics have complained that he doesn't provide a meaty enough foil for Plainview but I disagree. It's fascinating that Plainview is too mean to allow this small irritant to persist and thrive. His sense of reason bristles at the ludicrous church services. But more importantly, his ego cannot cope with another man absorbing the people's interest. The feebleness of Eli Sunday also makes the scene where Plainview beats the crap out of him even more powerful and pathetic.

As for Paul Dano, maybe he was thrust into the role of Eli Sunday with too little preparation time. Maybe his scenes preaching aren't quite convincing. Does he really have the charisma to make us believe that he would found a church? But for every weak scene there's a great scene. One of the best is when the bullied preacher turns on his own father and becomes a bully himself.

If Dano's casting is one problem, I can imagine the final episode of this film striking some as over-the-top and ridiculous. By that point, I was so suckered into this world that I bought every second of it. And I think that is Anderson's real achievement here. He has created a world that seems alien and brutal and that is filled with characters from the Inferno. And yet, it is depicted with such conviction you can't help but take it to heart.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD played Toronto 2007 and will play Berlin 2008. It opened in the US in 2007 and opens in February 2008 in Austrlia, Germany, Portugal, Austria, Brazil, Estonia, Italy, Norway, the UK, Belgium, Argentina, Greece, Portugal, Russia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, France and the Netherlands.

FAST FOOD NATION - the agit-doc is dead! Long live the non-fiction fiction film!

I am getting a little bit tired of earnest liberal agit-docs that usually have little visually to do with cinema, could equally well be shown on TV, and tend to preach to the converted. Michael Moore may have increased the sale-ability of documentary cinematic releases and part of me is happy about that but the other part bemoans the seemingly homogenous product now flooding arts cinemas across the land. I've written too many reviews starting: "this week's self-explanatory documentary..." or "the point being...?" That's not to say that I don't agree with everything these docs are trying to say. I do. I just wonder how effective they are. Clearly no nasty evil polluter is going to slap down ten squid at his local cineplex to say a movie called "Nasty evil capital bastards are raping the rainforest!"?

So it was with real interest that I watched Richard Linklator's new movie, FAST FOOD NATION. And appropriate since I just watched INFAMOUS - a movie about how Truman Capote invented a new form of novel - non-fiction fiction. Capote's idea was to "bring alive" the facts of the case by applying fiction techniques such as emotional insight and inter-cutting narrative structures. Richard Linklater is pretty much following the same logic here. He takes a popular non-fiction book by Eric Schlosser that tackles the murky, hidden world of the industrial food industry in the USA. Linklater opts not to make another earnest documentary out of this material. Instead he gives us a feature length movie.

So, FAST FOOD NATION is not a documentary. It's also not a comedy or satire, although it contains the odd funny line. Rather it is a straight movie that contains three inter-twining stories.

The first story is about a group of Mexican illegal immigrants, including Wilmer "Fez" Valderamma and Catalina Sandino Moreno, who are helped over the border by Luis Guzman's pimped-out van driver and taken to a meat-packing plant in Colorado. There, watched over by the sleazy Bobby Cannavale, they earn a pittance which feels like a fortune to them and put their lives at risk in horrific jobs, turning live cows into frozen meat patties. This strand is brilliantly acted - showing for instance that Valderama and Canavale can play it straight. But be warned, the footage is not for the weak of stomach.

The second story is about some teenagers - played by Ashley Johnson and Paul Dano who work in a fast-food joint in the same Colorado town. The strand shows Ashley's character becoming politically aware thanks to her hip uncle, played by Ethan Hawke and, I kid you not, Avril Lavigne.

The final story is about a Vice President of Marketing at the same fast food company played by Greg Kinnear. He is sent to the same Colorado town to find out - quite simply - why there is cow shit in the meat patties. It's not hard to find out why. Everyone in town knows - from Kris Kristofferson's wise old rancher, to his maid, to the morally-challenged realist who brokered the deal - played in a chilling cameo by Bruce Willis.

The advantages of the non-fiction fiction structure is that it gives the viewer some emotional engagement with the issues. I know we should care as much about employees losing limbs at a meatpacking plant in real life, but thanks to the way our brains are wired, it's easier to care and to "get it" if we have some charismatic characters on screen. The other advantage is that we get a proper movie with proper production values, visual style (which in fairness is not that spectacular in this particular film) and sound-track. The disadvantage is that on occasion characters say stuff which is just not credible, because they are basically making a speech. It doesn't happen often but it does happen, especially when the Ethan Hawke character is on screen or when a radical student says, "The patriotic thing to do at this point is to break the Patriot Act". A gloriously seditious sentiment. Similarly, there is an extended discussion between the students as to why the cows won't leave their pens even when the fence is broken - a rather clumsy extended metaphor for humans who know fast food is made from shit-infused meat but still eat it.

Still, for all its flaws and clumsiness, I think FAST FOOD NATION is far more successful in conveying its message and simply entertaining its audience than the usual agit-docs. To that end, it's a noble experiment and hopefully one that will be influential.

FAST FOOD NATION played Cannes and London 2006. It is already on release in Australia and Germany and opens in the US and France at the end of November. It opens in Israel and Belgium in January 2007 and in the Netherlands in March.

Overlooked DVD of the month - THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE

THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE fits all the usual criteria for the overlooked DVD of the month: it's really bloody good but slipped under the radar on original release - perhaps because it was shown on around two screens in Shoreditch for a millisecond. Anyways, it's out on DVD now and is definitely worth checking out.

THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE is a powerful drama about "finding yourself". And yet it's not at all a steaming pile of pretentious horse-dung. It stars the outstanding actor Daniel Day-Lewis as an ageing hippie called Jack. He lives on the remains of an old commune and shoots at greedy capitalist bastard property developers. Problem is, he's ill and worried about what will happen to his beautiful teenage daughter, Rose, when he carcs it. So, Jack gets the woman he's been casually sleeping with to move in with her two teenage sons. Not unsurprisingly, Jack's daughter Rose feels threatened by this invasion of her isolated home.

Writer-director Rebecca Miller creates two eccentric lead characters that are unlike anything I have seen on screen before. Camilla Belle, who plays Rose, matches the intensity of Daniel Day-Lewis note for note. It's a mesmorising performance. Given Belle's more recent work in piss-poor 70s horror remakes one can only hope she gets back to the path of righteousness and Indie cinema soon. The supporting cast is also strong: Catherine Keener brilliantly conveys the conflicting motives of the girlfriend and we even get a cameo from Paul Dano - the brother from LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. As the movie reaches its crescendo we have more than just a glib tale of how hippies are nice and capitalists are bastards - and more than just another exploitative tale of transgressive love. This is a cruel and complex take on the acquisitive instincts in all of us - whether emotional or physical.

THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE showed at Sundance 2005 and was released in the UK earlier this year. It is available on Region 1 and Region 2 DVD.

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.

THE KING - Frustrating, inexplicable, strange....

THE KING is an odd movie to review. I cannot say that I enjoyed my viewing experience or that this is a coherent or compelling movie. And yet I am somewhat reluctant to dismiss it as a “bad movie” that you should avoid. The difficulty for me lies in the script. The story is pretty hackneyed. There is a preacher who lives with his wife, son and daughter in contemporary Corpus Christi, Texas. They are depicted as the kind of right-wing evangelical Christian family that many people whose sole knowledge of the US comes from watching The Daily Show and reading The Onion might reflexively believe populates the entire US between LA and New York. The boys hunt deer and the girls clean up the entrails and cook the food. The young son plays Christian rock and is campaigning for Intelligent Design to be taught in his high school. The father preaches in the kind of Church that has a flashing electronic board advertising prayer times. Into this world steps a young man called Elvis, who has just quit the marines and now works as a pizza delivery boy and lives in a rented motel room. He is the illegitimate child of the preacher, and now, with his mother dead, has come back “home”. Unsurprisingly, the preacher’s first reaction is shock and denial, which pretty much breaks Elvis’ heart. His reactions to this rejection are bizarre and extreme.

Now, I started feeling uneasy at the caricatured picture of the preacher’s family at the start of the flick, but I thought, you know what, this could be a great chance to explore what goes on behind the scary clichés. (And yes, I do find the concept of teaching Intelligent Design in schools scary.) But the film never really does this. You get the idea that the family is made up of essentially good people, if somewhat conflicted, but despite some obvious set pieces involving the mother, I found it hard to empathise with their reactions to Elvis’ appearance. The real enigma, however, is Elvis. Having been rejected by his father, his actions take us into the realms of melo-drama or implausible daytime soap opera. There were storylines here that would make Sunset Beach look like an essay in narrative restraint. Crazy narrative arcs are not bad of themselves. Indeed, the outstanding western, THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA used a surreal storyline to bring home the emotional awakening of its key characters. The problem with THE KING is that I was no clearer as to Elvis’ motives or even mental health at any point of the film. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe we are meant to be left with an enigma. But it makes for an intensely frustrating viewing experience.

Having said all this, in a curious way, this film is worth seeing purely because it is very well put together. The actors are all high-class, not least William Hurt as the preacher, Gael Garcia Bernal as Elvis, and Pell James as the preacher’s daughter. In addition, I though the camera-work was outstanding – evocative, beautiful, sometimes spooky. There is a very nicely done scene (although perhaps not fantastically original) near the end of the film, where the camera tracks through the rooms of the preacher’s house, slowly and quietly, until it comes across a painful scene that we *know* is waiting for us. Stirring stuff. The key question is whether good acting and photography, not to mention a cool sound-track, can compensate for a story-line that strains credulity and empathy. For me, THE KING was still worth a look, but if you watch movies rarely, you can surely pick better films on which to shell out your ten bucks.

THE KING was released in France in January 2006 and is currently on limited release in the US and UK. I do not know of a release date for Australia, Austria or Germany.