jOBS

jOBS - the too cutely titled Steve Jobs biopic - is a ruthlessly efficient but frustratingly unenquiring film that is ultimately saved by the convincing central performance by Ashton Kutcher.  Kutcher goes beyond his striking similar resemblance to adopt the loping walking and speaking style of the iconic computer developer, and allied with superb production design and authentic Los Altos locations, this make the film compelling despite its stylistic problems.  These must rest with the director Joshua Michael Stern (SWING VOTE) and debut screenwriter Michael Whiteley..   To be sure, they don't sugarcoat Jobs - they show his immediate and early ripping off of fellow collaborators - his harsh rejection of his daughter - his frustrating single-mindedness - but they never investigate it.  Why - on the first deal they did together - did Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad) off?  Where did he get the drive and knowledge to cut such a financially astute deal with venture capitalist Mike Markkula (Dermot Mulroney)?  Why did he cut out early collaborators such as Daniel Kottke (Lukas Hass) out of the lucrative Apple IPO?  Why did he deny he was his daughter's father for so long?  And why did he then recant?  This latter issue is perhaps the most frustrating.  In a movie that uses Jobs' eviction from Apple a major psychological turning point it's incredibly annoying to reunite with him a few years later where he's apparently turned into a doting father, husband and zen father. 

So if we're not getting psychological depth here, what are we getting?  A fairly straightforward corporate history of Apple. It reads as follows.  Woz is the IT genius who creates the PC but Jobs is the marketing and design guru who sells it to the financiers and then to Wall Street.  His search for perfection and naivety leads him to a position where the greedy capitalist CEO John Scully (Matthew Modine) forces him out, causes a personal crisis for Jobs and a corporate crisis for Apple. Years later he's called back, annoints his design successor Jonny Ive (Giles Matthey) and announces the design of the iPod.  The rest is final credit success and deliberately avoided death.  I'm no expert on Apple's corporate history so I can't tell you if the account is broadly accurate and fair, but it IS compelling, if a little bit TV movie of the week.  And that's how I'd advise you watch this: on the small screen.

JOBS has a running time of 128 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA.

JOBS played Sundance 2013 and was released earlier this year in the USA, Singapore, Canada, Turkey, France, Argentina, Kuwait, Portugal, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Australia, Israel, South Korea, Brazil, Poland, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland, Croatia, Serbia, Thailand, Estonia, Greece, Hong Kong, Finland, Lithuania, Spain, Taiwan, Colombia, Latvia, Mexico, Bangladesh, Macedonia, Japan, Norway, Peru, Sweden, Italy and Chile. It does not yet have a UK release date.

STOKER

"A high camp B-grade thriller more akin to Dark Shadows than Oldboy."

What is that we love about the cinema of Park Chan Wook?  For me, there are so many things:  the carefully staged tableaux; the precise use of colour as symbolism; the willingness to mine the very darkest areas of human psyche - sexual violence, incest; the melodramatic plots of vengeance and redemption; the rich vein of black humour.  When you watch a Park Chan Wook film you know you will be taken somewhere unique and memorable.  Looking back now, it's been years since I've seen his work, but certain scenes are still vivid in my mind.  Lady Vengeance plunging her face into the redemptive white tofu.  Her daughter holding a knife to her throat, threatening her Australian adoptive parents to take her back to Korea.  Mr Vengeance slashing the Achilles tendons of his victim in the water.  The amazing, almost video-game shot, of Oh Dae Su violently dispatching the guards of the prison-hotel. 

All this should explain why I was left cold by STOKER.  It's Park Chan Wook's first American film, and is about as watered down and weak-minded as Wong Kar Wai's incredibly disappointing MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS. I'm not sure whether something was literally lost in translation, or whether the American producers constrained Park Chan Wook's trademark hypnotic excesses.  Maybe it was the script by Wentworth Miller,  better known as the actor who played Michael Scofield in Prison Break - a script that teases us with the potential for deep dark sexual secrets, and taboo attractions but doesn't have the courage to take us deep into depravity.  Which isn't to say that STOKER is a subtle, discreet film. While it dances round the edges of chaos, it contains performances of high camp.  Both Nicole Kidman and Matthew Goode have line deliveries that are flat out funny, and not in a good way.  Too often scenes which should be menacing and uncomfortable are just absurd.

But to go back to the beginning, STOKER is not a horror film and certainly contains no vampires or references to Bram Stoker.  Instead, it plays like a high-camp B-grade thriller, akin to DARK SHADOWS.  We open with a kooky family in an isolated country house.  India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) is a withdrawn emo teenage girl mourning the death of her father Richard (Dermot Mulroney).  Her alcoholic mother (Nicole Kidman) flirts outrageously with her mysterious brother-in-law, but Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) seems transfixed on his niece instead. She resents him, but is also darkly attracted to him, and so chooses to overlook the strange and threatening events that seem to surround him.  Moreover, she is a slippery and unreliable point of view.  Is she fantasising, remembering, distorting the truth?  

All of this seems like a great set up for some truly messed up taboo familial craziness and violence, but sadly it all ends with a whimper rather than a bang.  By the time we got to anything faintly resembling craziness the movie had lost all credibility.  There was no emotional heft and investment similar to the Vengeance films, where I cared deeply what happened to the main characters. The only saving graces were Mia Wasikowska's finely modulated performance, cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon' luscious visuals and Nicholas deToth's editing.  There's a scene where Nicole Kidman's hair morphs into a field of grass.  It's the image that I'll remember in ten year's time, if I remember this poor excuse of a film at all.

STOKER played Sundance 2013 and will be released on March 1st in the UK, Ireland and the USA. It opens in Singapore and Taiwan on March 7th; in Greece, Italy and Romania on March 28th; in the Netherlands on April 11th; in Argentina and Iceland on April 19th; in Denmark on April 25th; in Belgium, France, Portugal, Brazil and Mexico on May 2nd; in Chile and Germany on May 9th; and in Australia and New Zealand on August 29th.

STOKER has a running time of 98 minutes and is rated R in the USA.

THE GREY

Joe Carnahan (THE A-TEAM, SMOKIN' ACES, NARC) delivers a raw, pure, man versus nature thriller that delivers on every level - empathetic, tense, emotionally affecting, beautiful, brutal. Based on a short story by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, the movie follows a group of workers in the arse-end of Alaska. Their plane home crashes into the snowbound wildnerness, leaving the handful of "survivors" to battle against extreme cold and some hard-core mean wolves. Against such extreme stakes, we learn a little about their past lives, and a lot about their characters. We start to care about them just as it becomes clear that the Joe Carnahan is not going to pull any punches. A lot has been said about how this is a classic "man versus nature" epic, wrestling back Hollywood from the pretty boys. But to me, it played more like a character study set against some awesome landscapes and with a lot of genuine scares. Particular kudos to the cast of "B-listers" who add real pathos to the film - Joe Anderson, Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo, Nonso Anozie, and in particular Dallas Roberts (Alicia's brother in THE GOOD WIFE.) But no-one's going to deny that this is really Liam Neeson's film. His transformation from Irish character actor to Hollywood action hero is surprising until you see him in action. There is no actor who drips more integrity, competence, and - in a stunning final scene that drips into a post-credit shot - more bad-assery. I loved every minute of it. 

THE GREY was released this weekend in the USA, UK, Canada, Ireland and Turkey. It opens on February 3rd in Lithuania; on February 16th in Australia and Poland; on February 23rd in Belgium, Denmark, Singapore, Romania and Spain; on February 29th in France; on March 8th in the Netherlands; on March 20th in Norway; and on April 12th in Argentina and Germany.

UNDERTOW - There are some things we just don't need to see

Josh Lucas mud-wrestling a squealing pig, his pale ass-cheeks wobbling over the top of his muddy britches. No, sir. We also do not need to see inferior remakes of cinematic classics, no matter what the pedigree of the director. No matter how impressive David Gordon Green's first two films were, there is no excuse for this blatant rip-off of The Night of the Hunter. In this version, Dermot Mulroney plays John Munn, the father of two kids, living in the backwoods of Georgia in savage conditions. One day his younger brother Deel Munn, played by Josh Lucas, shows up. He's after some old Mexican coins that Mulroney inherited from his father. This being one of Green's trademark "Southern Gothic" flicks, the fight for the coins soon turns violent. So the two kids abscond, chased by their sinister, murdering Uncle. Now, despite my deep scepticism as to the point of remaking (broadly speaking) The Night of the Hunter, there is a lot to like about UNDERTOW. Apart from Josh Lucas, the cast is outstanding. In particular, Jamie Bell and Devon Alan are captivating as the two young Munn boys. The evocation of mood - from photography to Philip Glass' score - is also first class. However, whenever Josh Lucas appeared on screen I was totally taken out of the movie thanks to his hammy over-acting. He plays menacing by opening his eyes *really* wide and getting all shouty in the manner of Al Pacino's more hammy performances. And when he starts on his sinister rampage he just reminded me of Jason Lee in My Name is Earl. And that's about as menacing as the English pace attack. (i.e. not very.) To sum up, there are worse looking films out on DVD this week, but I doubt if any are more frustratingly mis-cast.

UNDERTOW screened at London 2004 and went on limited release in the UK last autumn. It was released on DVD yesterday.

THE FAMILY STONE - great cast, shame about the script

THE FAMILY STONE is a film that is less than the sum of its parts. Despite having a great cast and moments of compelling drama and kooky comedy, it never manages to combine these elements into a coherent and involving whole. The movie is an out-and-out sentimental Christmas family movie, that has ambitions beyond its stature. But first, let's start with the comedy set-up. Dermot Mulroney plays a stand-up guy who comes from the most politically correct family on the face of the planet. Mama Stone, played by the luminous Diane Keaton, has a whole bunch of kids, including a deaf gay son who is dating a coloured guy; a stoner son who edits documentary film (Luke Wilson); the aforementioned stand-up guy; a pregnant "rock of the family" daughter; and another kooky irritable daughter played by Rachel McAdams. On the Christmas in question Dermot Mulroney brings home his uptight Wall Street girlfriend played by Sarah Jessica Parker. The family - who pride themselves on being non-judgmental, liberal, anything-goes people - immediately turn on her. They are judgmental and mean, forcing her to flee to the local motel and call her sister as back up. The kid sister, played by Claire Danes, fits in fine, of course, creating even more tension. The film plays out from here in a fairly predictable manner. Opposites attract, pot saves the day, and by the end of the movie no real lessons have been learned. People are still as judgmental. For me, the real failing of the movie is its inability to handle the marked changes in tone of the dramatic and comedic moments. We go through scenes where the Sarah Jessica Parker character really bares her soul and her insecurities. To SJP's credit, I really felt for her. And then, a blink of an eye later, we are meant to laugh at slapstick comedy which includes, I kid you not, people slipping up on spilt pudding. Some films can get away with this change of mood and are the stronger for it. But here, it simply feels clumsy. So, all in all, a deeply disappointing movie. What a waste of a great cast!

THE FAMILY STONE went on release in the UK, US, France and Germany on the 15th December 2005. It goes on release in France on the 28th December 2005.

THE WEDDING DATE - bland, but harmless, rom-com

THE WEDDING DATE is a movie that's desperately trying to be a Richard Curtis-like Anglo-Yanqui romantic comedy. Debra Messing plays a woman with low self-esteem who hires a male escort (Dermot Mulroney) to her date at her sister's wedding: a wedding at which the man who dumped her is the best man. Of course, this being a rom-com, the woman and the male escort fall in love.

Messing is charming and Mulroney is surprisingly subtle as the escort. Amy Adams is good as the conflicted younger sister about to walk down the aisle, but Jack Davenport is on autopilot as the dim-witted, good-hearted English schmuck.

But the real problem with the film aren't the performances but the writing. It simply isn't funny enough and nor does it have the intelligence to deal with the fact that the lead actor plays a male escort. I mean, I'm not expecting PRETTY WOMAN but neither do I expect someone to set up a high concept and then leave it dangling.

THE WEDDING DATE is on global release.