LOVE & FRIENDSHIP

Jane Austen's novel Lady Susan is an odd fowl - full of the same sparkling wit as her more well-known novels, but with none of their moral conservatism. After all, Austen's best-loved heroines are those that go on journeys of self-awareness and humbling. Emma, Lizzie and Marianne misjudge their love interests, and though, clever, must be humbled before ending up married under the benevolent guidance of their rich older husbands.  In her later novels, it is the men who must do the learning, but nonetheless the novels are conservative in their final choices.  Both Fanny Price and Anne Elliot are ultimately rewarded for their quiet virtue when flashier rivals have been undone.  

By contrast, Austen's Lady Susan is a quite radical novel, and one utterly in contrast with the novels published either in or shortly after her lifetime.  The eponymous heroine has all the sparkling brilliance and beauty of a Lizzie or Emma, but also something of the hard-hearted cynicism and slippery morality of a Becky Sharp.  As a result, the novel and indeed this wonderful new film adaptation, feel rather more like Oscar Wilde than a more staid costume drama.  And this feeling of brilliance mischief is only enhanced by Whit Stillman's superb feeling for comic timing and framing.

Lady Susan is a beautiful, clever but impoverished widow in the late eighteenth century. She's conducting an affair with the divine but married Lord Manwaring, but must simultaneously find both herself and her daughter good husbands. She begins by flirting with her brother-in-law, Reginald de Courcy who is closer in age to her meek daughter Frederica, while trying to foist Frederica on the dull-witted Sir James Martin.  Meanwhile the de Courcy family would of course far prefer the virtuous Frederica for a daughter-in-law, and Lady Susan would rather like to have her cake and eat it.

In Whit Stillman's retelling of this story we move through the various flirtations and marriage plots at a brisk pace and with crackling wit. In a sense, we are in familiar territory to Stillman's DAMSELS IN DISTRESS. For Kate Beckinsale's Lady Susan is very much like Greta Gerwig's Violet - tremendously self-assured and clever and yet brutally bossy and unaware of how absurd half of her pronouncements are.   The best thing you can say about the casting is that you're simultaneously enchanted by Susan and horrified by her.  Indeed, I left the film with a profound regret that Beckinsale has been shoe-horned into schlock B-roles in Hollywood when she could've become a fine dramatic or comedic actress, and certainly someone I would've loved to see play Becky Sharp.

The supporting cast is brilliant although it's the unknown names that shine. Indeed, Chloe Sevigny and Stephen Fry are rather wasted in the smaller roles of Mr and Mrs Johnson - a sly joke being that she will be punished by being taken back to Connecticut ("My dear, you might be scalped!")  There's far more fun to be had watching Tom Bennett as Sir James - in fact, I'd go so far as to say that he almost steals the movie.  And Justin Edwards is superbly funny in a smaller role as Charles Vernon.

The resulting film is laugh out loud funny and satisfyingly cocks-a-snoop at all the predictable morality of classic costume drama.  All the women are clever, even the ones who initially look meek, and all the men are puppets whose emotions and fortunes are directed by them.  To that end, I suspect this might tempt fans of writers such as Thackery and Trollope as well as the Austen fans out there. The only slightly bizarre thing is why Whit Stillman decided to rename Lady Susan as LOVE & FRIENDSHIP unless poking fun at a movie that might have easily been called SEX & MONEY?

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP has a running time of 92 minutes and is rated U.  The movie played Sundance 2016 and is currently on release in the UK, Ireland, the USA, Kuwait and Canada. It opens in Norway on June 17th, in France on June 22nd, in Poland on June 24th, in Portugal on June 30th, in Australia on July 31st, in Denmark on August 11th, in Taiwan on September 2nd, in Sweden on September 23rd and in Brazil on October 27th.

CONTRABAND

CONTRABAND is about as perfect as a caper movie gets - fast, fun, thrilling, intelligent.  To be sure, it's basic plot components are pretty conventional, but it has a tricksy enough story, and enough good humour to be the perfect Friday night-forget work-have some fun movie!

Mark Wahlberg plays a former smuggler turned straight, drawn back into "one last job" to save his idiot brother-in-law from the local drug dealer (a typically over-the-top Giovanni Ribisi).  He assembles a crew that's going to smuggle in forged currency from Panama in J K Simmons freighter. Of course, "one last job" movies are never simple.  And this one involves a double-cross back home; getting caught up in a Panamian armed robbery; an art heist; and a superbly choreographed fit-up job.  A few plot twists are predictable but there are enough genuine surprises, and I love that no plot thread is left untied.

The movie is directed by the Icelandic actor-writer-producer-director Baltasar Kormakur (JAR CITY) who wrote and starred in the original.  Together with DP Barry Ackroyd (GREEN ZONE) he directs the movie with real style and pace, and a surprisingly light touch!  There are many scenes and lines where it's clear that the smugglers are having a great time, despite or even because of the high stakes - more young kids up to some japes than Michael-Mann style existential angst.  I also really liked the casting (ex Ribisi) - being particularly impressed by Kate Beckinsale, of all people!, actually doing some proper acting as Wahlberg's wife. 

Flicking through the IMDB review page it becomes clear that CONTRABAND has taken a bad rap for being too genre-cliche-ridden.  Whatever. I had a bunch of fun watching it, and it's in my Best Of list for the year. Not every film has to be a heart-wrenching, life-changing Iranian art-house flick. There will always be room on this blog for good honest popcorn entertainment.

CONTRABAND is on release in the USA, Kazakhstan, Russia, Singapore, Bulgaria, Canada, Pakistan, Israel, Kuwait, Estonia, Iceland, Romania, the Philippines, India, Syria and Poland. It goes on release in Hong Kong on February 9th; in Australia and New Zealand on February 23rd; in Portugal on March 1st; in the Netherlands on March 8th and in Germany, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Turkey and the UK on March 16th. It opens on March 22nd in Belgium, Denmark and Hungary; on April 19th in Argentina; on April 27th in Brazil and Lithuania; on May 4th in Sweden and on May 16th in France and Italy.

Justifiably overlooked DVD of the month - EVERYBODY'S FINE

EVERYBODY'S FINE is an embarrassingly bad movie - shamelessly manipulative, bland, banal, unoriginal, and just plain dull. It tells the story of Frank Goode (Robert de Niro) - a retired widower whose four children bail on a family visit at the last minute. So, armed with his medicine and against his doctor's advice, he boards trains and buses to visit them all in turn. First he turns up at artist David's flat only to find it deserted. His other three grown children will keep up the evasion of where David really is - trying to protect a father they really have no means of communicating with authentically. Each evasion is more painful than the next. On the second visit, Frank's daughter (Kate Beckinsale) is caught out using her son's illness to escape the family visit. She seems self-absorbed and her son finds the grandfather irrelevant. The third visit is with Frank's other son, (Sam Rockwell), a percussionist in a regional orchestra. His father seems disappointed that he didn't become a conductor - the son seems ashamed to have let down his father but incapable of persuading him that this is what he wants. The final visit is with the other daughter (Drew Barrymore) who seems to have more time for her father, but by this time, he's out of meds and increasingly disillusioned. There is, however, no real enlightenment here. No real questioning or exploration of the relationships. Just think - this is same material - these doubts and neuroses about parental expectations and evasions - that powered the cinema of Ingmar Bergman. And just see what schmaltz and banality it is reduced to in its final act.  I am hardly surprised that this movie went straight to DVD in the UK. 

Additional tags: Kirk Jones, Henry Braham, Melissa Leo, James Frain, Andrew Modshein, Dario Marianelli

EVERYBODY'S FINE was released in winter 2009/2010 in the US, Israel, Mexico, Spain, Poland, Hong Kong, Sweden, Lebanon, Singapore, Panama, Australia, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Kuwait, Estonia, Peru, Argentina, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, the Philippines and Italy.

VACANCY - pretty vacant

There's no point in asking why Hollywood insists on churning out these derivative, mediocre horror flicks. The answer's simple. They're relatively cheap - requiring only deserted motels/warehouses/army facilities and C-list stars. You don't even need to bother with an original plot.

In the case of VACANCY, the standard issue victims are played by Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson. They discover that their creepy motel room is actually a snuff movie set. The first fifty minutes of the movie are actually pretty well put together and successfully ramp up the tension. DP Andrzej Sekula creates a suitably grungy look in contrast to the eerily clean feel of AMERICAN PSYCHO. It's also quite nice to have protagonists that you can sympathise with because they're half-intelligent adults as opposed to whiny-ass teenagers. And despite their C-list status, Wilson and Beckinsale actually perform pretty well. Early on they have a conversation in which they discuss their impending divorce. It feels real and heartfelt. I almost suspected them of having some range. The last twenty minutes of the movie are as weak as a very weak thing, though.

I don't know why I persist in watching this stuff. I mean, it's not like it's actively bad, but it certainly doesn't push out the boat in the way that the best J-horror does. I feel that we're at the edge of a trend that leads toward the best-selling movie in 2055 being called "ASS".

VACANCY is already on release in the US, Russia, Egypt and the UK. It opens in Singapore, Denmark, Germany, Malaysia, Finland, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, the Netherlands and Slovakia in July. It opens in Belgium, France, Brazil and Australia in August. It opens in Argentina in September and in Spain in November 2007.

CLICK - even The Hoff can't save it

CLICK is a movie so lazy and depressing that even the presence of schmoove eighties icon, David Hasslehof, cannot save it. It is written by the guys behind the mediocre Jim Carrey starrer, BRUCE ALMIGHTY. (You know, the movie where god, in the form of Morgan Freeman, gave Bruce his godly powers, only for Bruce to zap his girldfriend's tits to make them bigger. Bruce messes his whole life up by making selfish choices and then god sorts it all out again.) Well, these script-writers are such unashamed hacks that they have actually bitten their own style by recycling the concept for Adam Sandler. I don't know about you, but I find it rather depressing that god has been replaced with a universal remote control in this version. Of course, workaholic Sandler uses it for ill - to bypass his family commitments in search of a job promotion - and then the whacky inventor Morgan Freeman, sorry, Christopher Walken, sorts it out. It's all very formulaic. Adam Sandler and his co-star Kate Beckinsale are painfully mediocre. And no doubt it will take a shed-full of cash at the UK box office just on the back of our nostalgia for THE WEDDING SINGER, men wanting to get an eyeful of Beckinsale and the sheer lack of anything better to do. A deeply depressing state of affairs. Was PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE just a dream?

CLICK is on global release.

UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION & AEON FLUX - when hot chicks in PVC jump-suits aren't enough

There's not a whole lot I want to say about these two movies, both of which are derivative, feature ch*cks in rubber suits, have confused narratives, banal dialogue and zero characterisation.

If your taste runs to vampires, werewolves and British character actors camping it up, you should opt for UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION. Bill Nighy does a hammy five minutes at the start; Derek Jacobi embarasses himself for five minutes near the end; the baddie is a Scottish actor called Tony Curran who was a minor character in the cult British TV drama, This Life; and these are the *good* points. Oh yes, and we get Brit Kate Beckinsale running around in a PVC suit, directed by her husband Len Wiseman, who obviously has a penchant for this sort of thing. He also directs one of the most cringe-inducing sex scenes since Shopgirl. But, hey, what do I know? This movie topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, and took more money than analysts expected. I guess that means we'll get Underworld 3 - at least I assume that is narratively possible because I was so freakin' bored I left ten minutes before the end. Still, I doubt narrative incoherence would prevent Wiseman for committing another crime against cinema if there were enough phat cash in it.

On the other hand, if your taste runs to science fiction flicks like THE MATRIX, you could submit yourself to AEON FLUX - a shameless Hollywood cash-in starring Charlize Theron in, oh yes, a PVC suit. In a distopian future, the last city on earth is Berlin and it is run by a nasty Big Brother type. Aeon Flux - ridiculous name, I know, but then what isn't in this movie? - is part of a highly trained, ruthless efficient, Spanish inquisition, sorry, insurgency. She runs around blowing shit up, doing cool stunts and uttering what are meant to be witty one liners. Clearly, the screenwriter thought "amateurs" was going to be the new "I'll be back". AEON FLUX suffers in comparison to UNDERWORLD 2 for the lack of overtly camp acting, although Frances McDormand does have a totally bizarre hair-do that elicits a few chuckles on first appearance. Still, that is scant reward for handing over your twelve squid on a Friday night. The only hope is that, as AEON FLUX lost money in the US, a sequel is not on the cards.

UNDERWOLRD EVOLUTION is on release in the UK, US and France and goes on release in Germany on the 2nd March 2006. AEON FLUX is already on release in the US. It goes on release in Austria on the 3rd February, in France on the 8th February, in Germany on the 16th February and in the UK on the 17th February.