BURNT

Director John Wells (AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY) returns to our screens with a slight and predictable romantic drama that had the capability to be so much more. BURNT stars Bradley Cooper as a michelin star chef called Adam who is a recovering addict.  He returns after a two year hiatus to open a new restaurant to prove all the critics wrong, win a third star, and poke two fingers in the eye of his rival Reece (Matthew Rhys).  On one hand, this movie wants to be a light romantic drama about a difficult person finding love and emotional balance. So naturally when Adam meets a feisty chef called Helene (Sienna Miller) and they have a massive ding-dong battle, we know they are going to end up falling in love. She even has a super-cute kid with which Adam can bond.  And when the first act of the movie sets up Adam as a dinosaur who refuses to cook sous-vide, we assume she's also going to give him a water-bath and some plastic bags and lead him joyously into the food revolution to wow the critics.  

But then the movie thinks about taking a slightly different turn into a much more complicated and fascinating world and we think - yes - this is why Brad Cooper has agreed to do what seems on the surface like quite schlocky fare.  We realise that within his kitchen he's dealing with the consequences of his addiction - the colleagues he hurt and the maitre d' he'd let down. And throughout the film we have the shadowy French figures who are after him from drug debts.  We see him struggle with his addiction and think, finally some meat for Cooper to sink his teeth into. But in the end it's too late in the final twenty minutes of the run-time to drag the film back into profundity and it wants its perfect romantic ending too badly. This is a tremendous shame, and a waste of a supporting cast that includes Emma Thompson, Alicia Vikander, Omar Sy and Daniel Bruehl.

BURNT is rated R and has a running time of 101 minutes.  The movie is on release in the USA, Turkey, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Macedonia, Portugal, Bulgaria, Iceland, Poland, Kuwait, Serbia, Singapore, Canada, Turkey, France, the Philippines, South Korea, the UK, Ireland and Sweden. It opens on November 12th in Russia and Estonia; on November 20th in Lithuania and Norway; on November 26th in Italy and the Netherlands; on December 3rd in Germany and Finland; on December 10th in Brazil, Denmark, Hong Kong; on January 21st in Chile; and on January 28th in Argentina and Thailand. 

WOMAN IN GOLD

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

The Bloch-Bauers were a successful cosmopolitan Viennese family whose house formed a salon where one might meet Dr Freud or Arnold Schoenberg.  Gustav Klimt painted a portrait of Adele, the celebrated Woman In Gold, but this was confiscated by the Nazis along with many other works of art.  After the war the painting hung for decades in the Belvedere Gallery until Adele's niece Maria sued the Austrian government for its return.  Dispute instituting a restitution committee, the government was understandably reluctant to give up paintings which had, by then, become synonymous with Austrian culture.  The process was thus one that was obdurate and highly contested. 

THE FIFTH ESTATE

You can listen to a podcast review of this film below, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews directly in iTunes.

I rather enjoyed the new Wikileaks movie, THE FIFTH ESTATE, despite its rather cartoonish characterisation of the two protagonists.  Julian Assange is very much painted as an odd fish: egomaniacal, deceptive, paranoid, with a casual disregard for human life.  By contrast, his early collaborator Daniel Berg, upon whose book this movie is partly based, is portrayed as a man of conscience and humanity.  Where Assange wants to publish and be damned, arguing that THAT is the very mission of Wikileaks, Berg wants to protect innocent sources and take the time to do actual fact-checking.  He sees the irony of Assange: a liberator of secrets who is himself secretive;  a noble idealist who treats those around him ignobly; the man who would bring institutions to account, but is accountable to no-one.

I'm not sure how much truth there is to such an account, and while it seems to mesh with other reports of Assange's idiosyncrasies and ego, one must also remember that he is subject to a smear campaign.  What I CAN say is that it makes for a highly compelling movie, with every broad stroke characterisation over-ridden by the voyeurs joy at seeing inside (supposedly) the most important news organisation of our time.  This is helped by a charismatic and note perfect impression of Assange by Benedict Cumberbatch, and another fine and sympathetic performance from Daniel Bruehl (RUSH) as Berg.  I also thought that just as David Fincher found an imaginative way to present programming in THE SOCIAL NETWORK, so director Bill Condon (TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN) has found a really neat visual trick to show us how Wikileaks operates.  He uses the metaphor of a room filled with old fashioned desks with computers and name plates.  By showing us who is sitting at them., what they are doing, how they are being destroyed at various points in the film, he helps us understand the various shifts in power no the reality behind Assange's facade.

I guess my frustration is that with the movie starting at the point at which Assange meets Berg, and given that our only view on his past is mediated by Assange, I'm not sure we get at the truth of what motivates him.  He clearly had a weird childhood, to put it mildly, and maybe it's too early to really get the full perspective on what makes him tick.  Still, as a biopic suffering from the fact that the sources only gives us one side of the story. THE FIFTH ESTATE, still manages to give us what seems to be an authentic and fascinating picture. It's well worth a watch.

THE FIFTH ESTATE has a running time of 128 minutes and is rated R in the USA.

THE FIFTH ESTATE played Toronto 2013 and is on release in the UK and Ireland. It opens next weekend in the USA, Canada, Estonia and Lithuania. It opens on October 25th in the Czech Republic, Italy, Brazil, Finland, Poland, Spain; on October 31st in Germany and Norway; on November 8th in Australia, Denmark and Iceland; on November 14th in Argentina and Singapore; on November 21st in Belgium and Hong Kong; on November 28th in Greece; on December 4th in France; on December 6th in Sweden and on December 19th in the Netherlands.

RUSH

The short version:  There's nothing wrong with RUSH as two hours of good quality entertainment.  It's well filmed, well acted, takes you into the racing circuit with exhilarating speed, and delivers some nicely timed laughs.  But, ultimately, RUSH is a movie made by two people who don't really care about or know about Formula One. It's a movie about two drivers who weren't really rivals, weren't really as important as the movie claims they are, and who were probably more complex than this movie allows them to be.  Save yourself the worry: watch SENNA instead. 

The podcast version: You can listen to a podcast review of the movie below or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes. 

The long version:  Ron Howard, a director of indifferent and inconsistent quality and no discernible style, returns to our screens with his take on the 1976 Formula One racing season, as defined by the intense competition between Maclaren's James Hunt and Ferrari's Niki Lauda. The blunt-talking Austrian, Lauda, had the better car and better technical ability, but British James Hunt has the superstar lifestyle and the raw aggression that made him a fierce competitor, if not for the long haul.  According to Peter Morgan's script, Lauda was jealous of Hunt's playboy charisma, and Hunt was envious of Lauda's respect and settled family life.  This spilled over into such vehemence that Lauda took points from Hunt on a technicality and Hunt goaded Lauda's colleagues into racing a dangerously slippery Nurburgring.  All F1 fans know that this resulted in Lauda being engulfed in flame for a full minute, as his face and lungs burned, and how he forced himself back into the racing car within three F1 races, placing fourth - arguably the ballsiest race run in F1 history.  So much is revealed in the movie's trailers.  But if you really don't know how the 1976 season ended, I'm not going to spoil it here.

There are four problems with RUSH.  The first is that Peter Morgan creates a script that is chock-full of sporting clichés and one-dimensional characters that barely register any kind of character development. James Hunt is the handsome playboy with a heart of gold (witness his beating up of the mean journo who taunts a burned up Lauda).  Lauda is a clichéd rational Kraut.  (And all this while Morgan does the interview circuit complaining about the cultural pigeonholing HE experiences as an Anglo-Austrian.)  It gets worse with the minor characters:  poor Alexandra Maria Lara's sole contribution as Mrs Lauda is to stand around looking concerned at crucial moments, while Olivia Wilde as Mrs Hunt has to look hurt. The only moment of character evolution comes with Lauda in his pivotal Fuji race but that's shown through some pretty cheesy flashback inter-cutting.

The second problem is that the movie is deeply patronising.  And I don't mean it stops every five minutes to give us a Basil Exposition guide to Formula One racing. In fact, US audiences less familiar with this majestic sport might find themselves short-changed on the sport and drowning in melodrama.   Rather, screenwriter Peter Morgan sees fit to give us a final scene between Hunt and Lauda in which they basically summarise all that has just occurred in the last two hours and what it all means for them and, thus, for us.  In a story that is basically very simple* and features very simply drawn characters, this is hardly necessary and underscores the fact that the movie has no real natural end because it doesn't really deal with a real-life proper rivalry.

The third problem with the film is director Ron Howard's inability to focus on the majesty of F1. And yes, I know, the races are well-filmed, and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle does a great job with his grass level shots of whirring tires and mist soaked visors, but this movie still plays in the register of cheesy daytime drama.  Just look at the excruciating and unnecessary soft-focus under-water love scene between Mr and Mrs Lauda - pure schmaltz - and inserted, no doubt, too soften the edges of King Rat.

The fourth problem is clearly nobody's fault but bad luck: this movie will, whether it wants to or not, stand in the shadow of Asif Kapadia's peerless documentary SENNA.  And it fails miserably by comparison.  Why?  Here's why.  For a start, Aryton Senna would be in many people's top three of all time great drivers and Prost in the top five.  Lauda maybe makes the top ten, partly because of his miraculous comeback.  It's harsh, but Lauda and Hunt just aren't names to quicken the heart in the way that Prost-Senna do.  And then, to make it even worse, the complexity of the characters portrayed in RUSH don't come close to SENNA.  Aryton is shown to be a conflicted, contradictory, fascinating enigma - deeply spiritual, biblical, but also a playboy.  The ladies man that Hunt was, but also the rationalist, arguing not to race in bad conditions, that Lauda was.  He is more interesting on his own than Peter Morgan's Lauda and Hunt put together, and that's before we get to the amazingly complete driver Prost with his dark relationship to the really sinister FIA chief Balestre.  

But even if RUSH had been a fictionalised account of Prost-Senna, it would have still failed because it cannot compete with the real live race footage, the real life exhilaration and ecstasy of Interlagos 1991; the real life sobbing tragedy of Imola 1994.  

The conclusion:  RUSH is a movie made by two people who don't really care about or know about Formula One. It's a movie about two drivers who weren't really rivals, weren't really as important as the movie claims they are, and who were probably more complex than this movie allows them to be.  Save yourself the worry: watch SENNA instead. 

RUSH has a running time of 123 minutes and has been rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK for strong language, sex and scenes of bloody injury.

RUSH played Toronto 2013 and is on release in the UK, Canada, Israel, Denmark, Hungary, Brazil, Finland and Ireland. It opens on limited release next weekend in the USA, as well as on wide release in the Philippines, Taiwan, Belarus, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Kazakhstan, Russia, Slovenia and Turkey. It opens on September 26th wide in the USA, in France, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Macedonia, Singapore, the UAE, Canada and Venezuela. It opens on October 3rd in Belgium, Australia, Germany, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Serbia, Norway and Sweden. It opens on October 10th in Hong Kong; on October 17th in Peru; on October 18th on Mexico and in February in Japan.

*Two formula one racers compete - one hot-headed one rational.  The rational one has a severe accident partly because of the goading of the hot-headed one but their rivalry helps him overcome his injury to race again. 

+I'm thinking something like Fangio, Clark, Senna, Schumacher, Alonso in the first rank.  Prost, Moss, Stewart, Vettel, Ascari in the second rank.  Then maybe Lauda, Villeneuve, Mansell, Piquet, Brabham, oh dear, maybe Lewis? in the third rank.  Hunt not even close. 

This is not a review of - 2 DAYS IN NEW YORK

Because Sundance projected the film for 30 minutes without subtitles, then faffed about for 10 minutes, then cancelled the screening. In all my years of going to LIFF and watching c50 films per fest, I've never seen something like that happen. Just sayin'

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - meh

So here's the thing. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is not a disaster. It's quite watchable and occasionally leavened by good performances, both comedic (Christoph Waltz, Brad Pitt) and dramatic (Mélanie Laurent), not to mention beefcake (Til Schweiger). There are flashes of Tarantino craziness (in a superb basement-tavern set-piece for one) but somehow the movie never takes off - never quite convinces us that we are in a surreal alternate place. In a sense, Tarantino is too good. He does what he's never done before - he creates genuinely dramatic, emotional, credible situations of fear and tension. And then he expects us to switch back in Tarantino the Comic Fantasist mode. As a result, when Tarantino does something that really fracks with reality (e.g. the ending) it just feels wrong. Final reaction: flat. Meh. Walk out of the cinema thinking, what just happened here?

Now, down to the nuts and bolts. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is really two films. The first is a pretty serious revenge movie. Mélanie Laurent plays a young Jewish woman who has watched her family butchered by Nazis, and is now in a position, as owner of a Parisian cinema, to blow up the entire German High Command at a premiere of some Nazi propoganda. Melanie Laurent is excellent as Shosanna Dreyfuss - just watch her suppress her fear when she realises she is taking coffee with the man who butchered her family. Diane Kruger is also notably convincing as a German film-star who has to charm her way into the premiere in order to disrupt it. The tension when she is being interrogated by the same Nazi officer who terrified Shosanna is palpable. The second movie, which surrounds the first, is a more broadly drawn Tarantino comedy in which a bunch of American Nazi scalp-hunters, led by Brad Pitt, team up with Diane Kruger's German film-star and Michael Fassbinder's British soldier, to also blow-up aforementioned Nazis. The comedy comes from Brad Pitt as a sort of Dirty Dozen war hero and his interactions with the Nazi villain played by Waltz (whose performance unifies the two parts of the film). The comedy does not come from a particularly ill-judged cameo from Mike Myers.

My suspicion is that the movie won't satisfy anyone. Tarantino fans will want more Brad Pitt/Basterds craziness and tire of the Parisian drama. Not to mention the fact that, rather bravely, Tarantino has chosen to be vaguely credible in keeping most of the dialogue in French and German. Indeed, he goes further, with a great running gag about Americans not speaking foreign languages. I just wonder whether that gag will back-fire with his target demographic. The cult-fans looking for kick-ass violence and witty dialigue might also object to the fact that, ultimately, this is not really a movie about France, Nazis, the Holocaust or anything other than Tarantino's abiding love of cinema, and his childlike belief that movies really can change the world.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS played Cannes 2009, where Christoph Waltz won Best Actor, Berlin and Melbourne 2009. It is released next weekend in Belgium, France, the UK, Australia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, New Zealand, Russia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Austria, Canada, Estonia, Norway, Sweden, Taiwan, the USA and the Netherlands. It is released the following weekend in Iceland, Argentina, the Czech Republic, the Portugal, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Denmark. It opens in September in Finland, Romania, Israel and Spain. It opens in October in Italy, Japan, Singapore, Mexico and Brazil.

LADIES IN LAVENDER - soporific schmaltz

Yes, yes, Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith are simply marvellous actresses and it's interesting to see Charles Dance turn his hand from acting to directing. It's even rather nice to seen a costume drama set, not in a country house, but in a charming cottage on the English coast. But oh my word, this movie takes a long time to make it's rather slight emotional point. The bat's squeak of emotion barely survives the two-hour run-time.

The plot, such as it is, involves a young Polish man (Daniel Bruehl in a thankless role) who is washed up on the English coast in the middle of the last century. He is taken in by two old spinsters. The elder (Maggie Smith) is kind but reserved. The younger (Judi Dench) forms a strange attachment to the young man, becoming irrationally jealous when he forms an attachment to a young German woman (Natascha McElhone). It turns out that Judi Dench's character is trying to recapture a youthful passion. This is all very sad, but frankly, not enough to set the world alight, and certainly not enough to engage my sympathy or interest.

LADIES IN LAVENDER played Toronto 2004 and was released that year. It is available on DVD.

2 DAYS IN PARIS - scarily observant, hysterically funny rom-com

2 DAYS IN PARIS is a truly funny, scarily observant film about the impossibility of relationships. Poly-functional film-maker Julie Delpy plays a 35 year old photographer called Marion who's in a relationship with Adam Goldberg's American Interior Designer, Jack. After 2 years together, 2 days in Marion's home town convinces Jack that he doesn't actually know anything about Marion and that she could well be cheating on him. For her part, Marion doesn't get why Jack is so uptight about her ex-boyfriends, nor why he prefers to take photos of everything rather than stay in the moment with her. Neither have any affection for France, nor any sex, thankfully undermining the city's reputation.

2 DAYS IN PARIS has rightly been compared to Woody Allen. It's a movie about real people in a real relationship having real conversations, albeit in a heightened state of neuroticism and with wittier one-liners. The observations ring true but are not laden with forced profundity. (Although I could have done without the twee drawing on the screen, I rather liked Marion's voice-overs.) But most of all, I love the ambiguity of the ending. Sure, the lovers end up dancing the night away, but are they in love or in a state of compromise? Are they enjoying a few moments before an inevitable break-up? You could watch a thousand Hollywood rom-coms and never find an ounce of such authenticity.

2 DAYS IN PARIS played Berlin 2007 and was released in Germany, Austria, Hong Kong, France, Norway, Finland, Taiwan, Belgium, Spain and the US earlier this year. It is currently on release in Thailand and the UK. It opens in Sweden on September 7th, in Italy on October 5th, in Australia on December 26th and in Turkey on December 28th.

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM - bang, crash, wallop, shark, jump, vomit!

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM is the third movie in the spy thriller franchise based on the Robert Ludlum novels, starring Matt Damon as the trained killer with amnesia and a grudge against the CIA.

The movie goes like this:

Bang! Crash! Wallop! Bourne is chased through Moscow, Waterloo station, Madrid, Tangier, NYC. He runs! He jumps! He punches the crap out of highly trained CIA goons! He smashes through glass! He deliberately crashes cars multiple times! He jumps off of tall buildings!

You admire visionary director Paul Greengrass' superlative hand-held camera-work and voyeuristic, slippery POV shots.

You get motion sickness.

Bourne utters the only cool line of dialogue in the movie.

David Straithern a.k.a. CIA evil baddie/rendition-lovin' neo-con says "We have a situation here" for the eighth time.

Bourne does something so incredible it renders the director's attempts at realism futile. You lose all faith in the franchise.

You go home.


Given the facetious tone of my review, I thought I'd bring you in on the thoughts of Matt Nelson: Offical Nice Guy & Human IMDB. (Minor spoiler in the final paragraph).

"Well now. The Bourne Ultimatum. Hmm…what can I say? It certainly has been a bad year for trilogies. You know, I’ve been trying to make up my mind about this movie for days. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Did I think it was anywhere near the standards of the previous two films? Hell no. Which is real shame because, other than Die Hard 4.0, this was the big summer blockbuster I was looking forward to most of all. I recall talking to a friend of mine a few months ago about the third Bourne film and he said: “It won’t be that good. I mean, where can they go with the character that they haven’t gone already?” He didn’t really know much about the Bourne films, so I labelled his “naïve” comments as ignorant and told him how strong I thought the franchise was going to continue to be. After all, the Bourne films were compelling, well acted, fast paced (yet not over the top) and (above all) fresh. Incredibly, he was proved more right than even he knows.

The story really didn’t explore any new territory and was only reasonably good filler for the action sequences. The wonderful Albert Finney was underused and, essentially, nothing more than replacement part for Brian Cox (man I love Brian Cox). It just seemed so lame, not to mention lazy, to hear that there was yet another bad guy “really” behind it all that you conveniently only now remember.

I agree with your comments about the style of shooting that Paul Greengrass incorporated during the picture. It was a brave move and, to give Greengrass his dues, worked well during the action sequences. However it was sometimes too much to take and I found myself hoping for just a little reprieve from all the jerking back and forth. Even during the slow, intimate scenes in small offices/motel rooms etc (which I didn’t feel merited the hand-held style of filming) the camera never stopped jerking in every direction – it was hard to see what was going on occasionally.

Also, I never felt like Bourne was ever really in danger. One of the great things about the previous instalments was that he got seriously injured when facing off against other skilled operatives and it wasn’t definite that he would walk away the victor. Yes he’s highly trained, and will probably come out on top, but he suffers for it. In this movie he just kicks ass and (I think) limps once off screen after a car crash.

Being fair, there were some great car chases and brutal fights scenes during the movie that did put a smile on my face. Then again, the car chases felt repetitive of the previous films and there seemed to be a few too many punch sound effects added during the fights sequences. And of course the cheesy ending didn’t help – no I’m not talking about where you see that he isn’t actually dead, I’m talking about the fact that everyone we’re meant to view as morally repugnant ends up being prosecuted for what they’ve done. Oh that’s nice and tidy then. Yawn anyone?

Overall I thought the film was enjoyable enough, but it should have been so much more.

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM is on release in the US, Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Latvia, Poland, Taiwan, the Philippines and the UK. It opens this weekend in Greece, Israel, Singapore, Brazil, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland and Spain. It opens later in August in Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Lithuania, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Estonia. THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM opens in Germany, Mexico and Turkey on September 7th; in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Norway and Sweden on September 14th; in Portugal and South Korea on September 20th; in Malaysia on September 27th; in Serbia and Montenegro on October 11th; in Hungary on October 25th; in Italy on November 1st and in Japan on November 17th 2007.

JOYEUX NOEL - Eurofromage!

JOYEUX NOEL/MERRY CHRISTMAS is a big fat euro-fromage that shouldn't work but kinda does! It is a movie so over-laden with peace, goodwill and humanity, that any honest god-fearing capitalist should be vomiting as they watch it. That I enjoyed this movie will be an eternal source of shame and dishonour. But I did. I fell for it. Watching those lovely soldiers in World War One uniforms downing their rifles, crossing no man's land and singing carols, as on that famous Christmas in 1914, brought a tear to my eye. However, as we all know, Christmas movies suck, and just to redress the balance, let me list a whole bunch of reasons why any self-respecting cineaste should have been throwing rotten tomatoes at the screen.....

1. We get the Wrong German. British audiences know two German actors on sight - Benno Fuermann - the steroid-induced twat in the Nibelung movie - and Thomas Kretschmann - the gorgeous skipper in King Kong. The hero of JOYEUX NOEL is Benno not Thomas, and that, dear ladies, sucks.

2. The story thread that involved Diane Krueger going to the freakin' front line to sing carols to the troops is so ridiculous that it makes Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo look like a plausible depiction of continental dating. This is not helped by the fact that Krueger and Fuermann, who play opera singers, are the worst lip-synchers in the history of cinema. A generation raised on Madonna is not gonna be convinced.

3. As with all movies financed by EU tax breaks, we have 5% of Barroso's recommeded daily allowance of Euro-propanda. The Germans are OKAY, the French are OKAY, the nasty English are absent, instead we have the Brits own oppressed ethnic minority - the Scots etc.

4. In general, the production values of this movie are piss-poor. I've seen more solid-looking sets on a 1970s episode of Doctor Who. In JOYEUX NOEL we see $22 million thrown at the screen, with barely a decently photographed shot in the entire 100 minutes. I mean, what happened to the cash? Was the executive producer smoking crack?

5. While I applaud the complex web of EU wide tax breaks that allows rich bastards to recycle tax losses by financing duff films, part of me screams at the lack of free market rigour to the whole process. It's not that this film will lose money that bothers me. It's that it was DESIGNED to lose money. After all, how can you hope to cream the US market in a war movie where not only do the Yanks not win, they aren't even in it?

JOYEUX NOEL/MERRY CHRISTMAS is already on release in Europe and the Far East. Somewhat bizarrely, it goes on limited release in the US on the 3rd March 2006.