SUICIDE SQUAD

Short take - Nice one DC Comics, with Suicide Squad you've now made the two most unwatchable films of the year. And you've hired the same team to make the sequel in what I can only assume is a conceptual art installation of irony. Let's cut the crap and just take a hundred million dollars and burn it on the sidewalk outside the Mann Chinese Theatre. At least we could get the side benefit of toasting some marshmallows. Just back away from the movie camera. Now.

Considered review - SUICIDE SQUAD comes on the heels of DC Comics attempts to establish a movie franchise analogous to Marvel's, where individual character movies alternate with ensemble pieces, each of which adds to the greater mythos.  The relaunch began with this year's dull-as-dishwater BATMAN VS SUPERMAN flop, and continues its disastrous run with this new ensemble piece.  The plot picks up from BvS with a world mourning the death of Superman and wary of the rise of "metahumans".  Accordingly, a government official decides to band together a bunch of both super-creatures and just insane people, and offer them time off their sentences if they'll help keep America safe.  But, in the manner of Nolan's Batman films, and basically every other superhero movie, supply creates its own demand, and the very people meant to make America safe contain within their host, one who'll destroy the earth.  What we should get from all this is a kind of DEADPOOL meets THE AVENGERS in which its the bad guys who band together to hunt down other bad guys. 

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB is a mediocre meandering film that just happens to contain two highly committed captivating performances.

The movie is inspired by the true story of Ron Woodruff, a good ole boy from Texas with all the associated bigotries, who was diagnosed as HIV positive in the mid-80s. It was an unforgiving era of paranoia about the AIDS epidemic, when doctors approached you with masks, and your community shunned you.  Add onto this the macho culture of a Texan rodeo town, and you have a desperate man, consigned to the margins, with a deep-grained prejudice toward his fellow victims.  What follows isn't a schmaltzy emotional enlightenment, a la PHILADELPHIA.  When Ron becomes close to Rayon, a pre-op transexual, it's because he needs an in to the gay subculture where he can peddle his under-the-counter anti-HIV meds, partly to finance his own use. To be sure, there are hints and flashes of a deeper understanding, and maybe affection, blighted only by Rayon's drug use, but this isn't that kind of movie.

What kind of movie is it? I'm not sure, and I'm not sure the writers are either.  At times, it feels like an odd couple dramedy with a mean old homophobe discovering his heart.  And at other times, it feels like they're trying to make an ERIN BROCKOVICH type issues move - equally concerned with Ron's fight against Big Pharma, and its rigged clinical trials pushing AZT as a treatment.  In the final act, the movie even pushes Ron into a courtroom drama, where he is demanding the right to take other medications that have not been approved by the FDA.  And the movie kind of fizzles out, and we learn that the Big Bad AZT actually wasn't so bad at all, apparently. Which is a bit of a damp squib conclusion.

By this point I'd come to the conclusion that DALLAS BUYERS CLUB was not a film with a unique and powerful directorial vision that director Jean Marc Vallée's debut feature had.  It's best viewed as a delivery vehicle for two great performances. The first of these is the least surprising: Matthew McConaughey has reinvented himself as a boundary-pushing character actor of the highest quality in BERNIE, KILLER JOE, MUD, THE PAPERBOY and  now here.  He doesn't shy away from showing the cold selfish arrogance of Woodruff, even in his supposedly reformed state, but also never lets him become a monster or a saint. It's a nuanced and fantastic performance.  The second great performance is from Jared Leto, as the pre-op transexual Rayan - vulnerable, world-wise, loving, damaged.  Both deserve the awards-season plaudits they're getting. So, is this a genuine BEST PICTURE contender? No. Is is worth seeing? Yes.  Beyond doubt.

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB has a running time of 117 minutes and is rated R in the USA.

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB played Toronto 2013 and was released last year in the USA and Canada. It was released last month in Portugal, the Netherlands, Singapore, France, Israel, Italy and Finland.  It was released early this month in Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, the UK, Ireland and Mexico. The movie opens this weekend in Australia and Greece; on February 20th in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Slovakia, Brazil and Japan; and on February 27th in Argentina, Paraguay, Turkey and South Africa. The movie opens on March 6th in Hungary, Serbia and Sweden; on March 14th in Spain and Poland and on March 21st in Norway.

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB has been nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Editor, Best Make-up and Best Original Screenplay.  It won the Best Actor and Supporting Actor Golden Globes for Drama. 

LONELY HEARTS - everything THE BLACK DAHLIA should've been

LONELY HEARTS is a beautifully put together, well-cast, engaging crime thriller based on gruesome crimes that took place in 1940s America. In fact, it’s everything the fiasco that was THE BLACK DAHLIA should have been.

Jared Leto plays real-life con-man, Ray Fernandez, who charms lonely divorcees and women out of their money. He’s mean but not menacing. He hooks up with Salma Hayek’s psychotic nymphomaniac, Martha Beck, whose jealous temper leads them into a truly twisted relationship. She murders one of their marks in a fit of pique and goads him into other murders. It’s a convincing and petrifying psychological portrait: Leto and Hayek really sell the notion that they are two “crazy lovebirds” – in fact, this may be Hayek’s career-defining performance, second only to her role as Frida Kahlo. The second plot strand sees John Travolta and James Gandolfini play the rozzers on the killers’ tail. Travolta gives a rare and appropriately introverted performance as a man whose conscientiousness a cop drove his wife to suicide. Gandolfini, however, does not move beyond his wise guy persona, and Laura Dern, as Travolta’s new lover, has too little to do. Scott Caan, however, has a nice smaller role. Performances aside, the movie looks fantastic – with all the costumes, locations and incidental details adding to the authenticity. I also love the matter-of-factness of the violence. The opening credits are a case in point. Absolutely class. All in all, despite, the limited release and under-the-radar marketing, LONELY HEARTS is definitely worth checking out.

LONELY HEARTS went on release in the US, Taiwan, Denmark, Finland, Israel and Norway in 2006 and in the Netherlands, Serbia & Montenegro, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Greece, France, Spain and Egypt earlier this year. It is currently on release in Mexico and the UK and opens in Argentina on October 4th. It is also available on Region 1 DVD.

LORD OF WAR – “Evil prevails" but enough about ELIZABETHTOWN….

LORD OF WAR is a decent black comedy about a second-generation Ukrainian immigrant called Yuri Orlov who escapes his low-life existence in New York by becoming a gun runner. There are plenty of cracking one-liners delivered in flawless dead-pan by Nicholas Cage and just enough exposure to the surrealities of African civil wars to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.

The movie was written and directed by Andrew Niccol, who previously brought us the outstanding sci-fi movie, “Gattica” and the haunting script of the “Truman Show”. In Gattica he coaxed Jude Law into giving his only decent acting performance to date, and he does it again with LORD OF WAR. Nicholas Cage is terrifyingly convincing as a nice guy who just wants to make a buck off the free market. I reckon this is his best performance since he won an Oscar for "Leaving Las Vegas". Niccol also has a great visual eye. The opening scene where we see the life of a bullet from manufacture to detonation, all from the bullet’s point of view, is astounding. It’s probably one of the most impressive credit sequences since “Swordfish”. Niccol also shoots a fantastic scene using time-lapse photography, where we see poor Africans asset—strip a 747.

But LORD OF WAR stops a little short of being great for the reason that this really is a script that revolves around one man, and only devotes time to his relationship with his friends and family in a cursory way. This holds back the film in a number of ways. First, the supporting roles are all under-written and waste the acting talents of Ian Holm (the Hobbit), Jared Leto (“Alexander the Great”’s boyfriend) and Ethan Hawke (the “Cop with a conscience” from “Training Day”). Second, for the film to work we have to be interested in what Yuri is up to. But this is a guy who succeeds in his occupation because he manages to shut out all the nasty aspects of his work. This sort of alienation is fascinating to watch for a while but not for 122 minutes.

So while there is a lot to recommend LORD OF WAR, and it is worth checking out, it is far from a perfect movie. If you really want to see what it is like to trade illegal goods, check out the biopic of a drug dealer named George Jung, played by Johnny Depp, in the fantastic movie “Blow”.

LORD OF WAR opened in the US in September and in the UK in October. It opens in France on the 21st December.