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.

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN is a cheesy obvious heart-on-its-sleeve film that shouldn't work but doesn't. It's as if it were cynically designed to capture the feel-good empowerment of FROZEN's "Let It Go" and does so with its relentlessly politically correct casting and story and a parade of empowering catchy tunes. That the product has been carefully honed does not detract from its effectiveness. I for one was utterly wrapped up in the two love stories at the heart of the film - and the idea that true love, entrepreneurial skill and a lack of prejudice will ultimately triumph. 

That the film works owes much to the on-screen charisma of Hugh Jackman, in the lead role of PT Barnum - the man who invented the modern circus and freak show.  What's amazing about this story is that it manages to turn something quite exploitative into an act of liberation. Poor Michelle Williams has less to do as his faithful suffering wife. Indeed, it's Rebecca Ferguson as real life famous opera singer Jenny Lind who has the most powerful moment as the woman hopelessly in love with a married man.  And then for the younger demographic we have teen heartthrob Zac Efron and the multi-talented Zendaya as a mixed race couple.  

Kudos to first time director Michael Gracey for giving this film such energy and joie-de-vivre - to long time Christopher Nolan collaborator, production designer Nathan Crowley for giving the film such a beautiful, fantastical and romantic look. He gives the tired faded concept of the circus real glamour.  But most of all kudos to the composers Joseph Trapanese and John Debney for producing genuinely catchy and uplifting songs.  This is truly a warm-hearted, wonderful film!

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN has a running time of 105 minutes and is rated PG. It is on global release. 

ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD

Ridley Scott's new movie is a true life thriller about the kidnapping of the 16 year old oil heir John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) and his billionaire grandfather's refusal to pay the ransom.  There were many sensible reasons not to do this - such as not encouraging or indeed financing further terrorist acts, but as played by Christopher Plummer, Getty I's primary motive seems to be miserliness. There's no shade, no colour. He claims to love his grandchild but we see no evidence of it. Indeed, in Plummer's hands this becomes one of the most convincing and frightening depictions of greed on screen - when Mark Wahlberg's ex CIA fixer asks Getty how much money he would need to feel secure, he roars "more", and we believe him.  I won't spoil the consequences of this miserly response, but suffice to say that it pits Getty against his ex daughter-in-law Gail (Michelle Williams). She is seen as the voice of reason, familial love, and frustration. She's also, thankfully, not without her own smarts in going up against the oil tycoon.

There's lots to like in this thriller - and I genuinely didn't know how it would turn out for poor JPGIII.   Ridley Scott avails himself of some superb location photography, from LA DOLCE VITA recreated Rome, to sunrise in Marrakesh, to the menacing, claustrophobic, winding streets of a Calabrian hilltop town.  Williams and Christopher Plummer give excellent performances, Romain Duris is also superb in a supporting role in the kidnapper with a heart, and this offsets the somewhat banal presence of both Wahlberg and Charlie Plummer.  I also liked the screenwriter's willingness to mix up the linear timeline early on, and show us a younger version of Grandpa Getty and how ruthless he was.   That said, this movie is not without its flaws. It suffers from a lack of pace in its middle section, Scott is clearly not interested in the victim's experience, Wahlberg is just miscast, and Williams, whose performance is good, chooses to adopt a Katherine Hepburn style mid-atlantic accent that kept on pulling me out of the film.  

ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD has a running time of 132 minutes and is rated R. In the UK it is rated 15 for strong violence, injury detail, threat and language.

The film was released in 2017 in the USA, Greece, Israel, Canada, Belgium. France, Malaysia and Estonia. It opened earlier this year in Australia, Italy, Bulgaria, the UK, Ireland, Lithuania and Romania.  It opens on Jan 11th in the Netherlands, on Jan 12th in Finland, Jan 18th in Hong Kong, Jan 25th in Brazil, Denmark, Hungary, Portugal, Singapore, Norway, Poland and Sweden, on Feb 1st in South Korea, on Feb 15th in Germany, on Feb 22nd in Russia, and on Feb 23rd in Spain and Turkey. 

WONDERSTRUCK - Day 2 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

I read Brian Selznick's WONDERSTRUCK upon hearing that his screen adaptation would be playing the BFI London Film Festival and immediately fell in love with it.  So many of its themes resonated with me - from the fear of having no place to fit in in society; to the love of collecting and old books; to the delight in architecture and models; and most importantly of all, a captivation with the history of cinema itself.  And that's all before one realised that this was going to be a profoundly beautiful treatment of the challenges and triumphs of growing up deaf.  Added to its thematic richness, Selznick's book was truly beautiful, unique and imaginative. He intertwines two stories of two kids from different eras - a girl called Rose living in 1920s New Jersey, and a boy called Ben living in 1970s Minnesota. Rose's story is told in beautiful black and white pencil drawings and depict a world of silent movie stars and the golden age of New York. Meanwhile Ben's story is told in text, but text that is beautifully and deliberately typeset. As the stories later meet and mingle, so to do the formats. The result is a visually stunning book.

Acclaimed auteur Todd Haynes admitted in his introduction to this film that he wasn't the obvious director for such a book at first glance - this is his first film aimed at a younger audience.  But when one considers its fascination with cinema history, who better than a director who has reinterpreted Sirkian melodrama for modern audiences? WONDERSTRUCK demands a director who is comfortable in different eras and styles, and who can harness the powers of pure cinema - visual, sound design, music - to convey emotional journeys and suspense. And this is what we get in this film.  In Rose's story, huge attention has been paid to texture - her hair, the patterns on her clothes, the thick ribbing on her tights, visually echoing the cross-grain drawings in the original book. And there's a delight and wonder at the stunning architecture of New York - we see it afresh in her eyes.  Millicent Simmonds - a talented deaf actress in her screen debut - is captivating in the part.  In Ben's story I feel Haynes really added to Selznick's world, showing a grittiness and griminess to pre-Giuliani New York and using music cues to great effect. In fact, Carter Burwell's score is one of the most impressive thing about this film, and holds the disparate themes together.

I can see why some people have been less than impressed by WONDERSTRUCK. It is patient and deliberate in how it unravels its story - the plot reveals depend on "big" events happening that may feel too many or too obvious - and its essentially a rather melancholy story about loss.  But I also feel that it's a deeply moving story about finding one's place in the world, triumphing over loneliness, and forging one's own path.  And I must admit that the final half hour had me in tears. Fans of the book will not be disappointed, and I feel that in the technical brilliance of the film, neither will Haynes fans if they open themselves up to the young adult material. After all, aren't so many of his films about misfits struggling to find a place in oppressive bourgeois conventional society?

WONDERSTRUCK has a running time of 117 minutes and is rated PG.  The movie played Cannes, San Sebastian, London and New York 2017. It opens in the USA on Oct 20th, in Hong Kong on Oct 26th, in France on Nov 15th, in the Netherlands on Dec 7th and in Belgium on Dec 20th.

CERTAIN WOMEN - BFI LFF 2016 - Day 8

Kelly Riechardt (NIGHT MOVES) returns to the London Film Festival with this hauntingly melancholy portmanteau film.  The film tells the story of three different women who have achieved a degree of material success in their lives, and contrasts this with the people who have been left by the wayside.  In each story, the women are living lives that are defined by a failure to communicate, and a lack of self-awareness regarding this failure. They are trapped in their success, unknowing, uncaring. 

In the first story Laura Dern plays a small-town lawyer annoyed by a client who just won't believe when her when she tells him he has no case.  She is frustrated by what she perceives to be his misogyny in refusing to hear bad news from a female lawyer. But the reality is that he is actually very distraught at the loss of his livelihood and desperately lonely.   Jared Harris (MAD MEN) gives a very moving performance as a man on the edge and Dern convinces as the lawyer who sees his breakdown as an inconvenience rather than a cause for empathy.  I also love how Reichardt keeps the final interpretation of whether she has gained empathy open at the end of the film.

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA - BFI LFF 2016 - Day 5

Kenneth Lonergan (MARGARET) has created a masterpiece in his tragicomedy MANCHESTER BY THE SEA, showing in what is turning out be an exceptionally good year at the BFI London Film Festival for bittersweet drama. The film stars Casey Affleck as Lee Chandler - a small-town boy who fled to Boston after a personal tragedy, but is brought back when his beloved elder brother Joe (Kyle Chandler - FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS) dies.  Joe leaves a detailed will making Lee the guardian of his teenage son Patrick (Lucas Hedges - THE SLAP) and the pair seem ideally suited.  The uncle and nephew have a genuine emotional bond and shared memories, delineated in flashback.  They share the same foul-mouthed sense of humour and seem to understand when the other needs space.  But they are fundamentally different.  Patrick is young and popular - he's on sports teams, he's in a band, he has a bunch of great friends and two girlfriends.  He great good humour make the few moments when we see his grief break through all the more powerful. But Patrick's ebullience also serves as a counter-point to Lee's almost ghost-like presence and a reminder of what he might have been like before his own personal tragedy.  The point of the movie - its emotional struggle - is to show whether Lee can somehow move beyond his past and become the father-figure that Patrick needs him to be.

SUITE FRANCAISE

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

In World War Two, Irene Nerimovsky penned the first two parts of a novel before being sent to her death in Auschwitz.  Sixty years later, her daughter discovered and published those two self-contained novellas as Suite Francaise and it became a literary sensation, perhaps more because of the romance of its discovery than the work itself.  We now have this movie adaptation of the book, focussing heavily on the second part - the love story between a French woman and a Nazi soldier- that starts with a depiction of the exodus from Paris that forms the first novella.

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL

Sam Raimi's prequel to the WIZARD OF OZ is a movie in which I can see so much to admire but which bored me for all of its overlong two hour ten minute runtime.  

I loved the visual design of the black and white prologue in a turn of the century Kansas carnival, where our anti-hero conman, conjurer and lothario, Oz, escapes an angry husband by taking off in a hot air balloon that will whisk him to a land of his subconscious that he has narcissistically called Oz.  I love the riot of CGI colour and subversive naughtiness by which Oz immediately romances the credulous witch Theodora (Mila Kunis), before breaking her heart and turning her to the Dark Side. I love the costume design that sees Rachel Weisz wicked with Evanora in luscious dark green ballgowns and Michelle Williams' good witch Glenda in gorgeous shimmering white. I love the casting of James Franco - who has always been almost too handsome, and painfully wooden and uncomfortable with that beauty.  His too wide smile and slightly hammy acting perfectly suits the conman role.  Most of all, I love the idea that despite all his petty cunning, Oz is really an idealist, who is full of admiration for Edison's inventions, and wonder at the power of cinema. In fact, OZ can be read as a movie about how cinema saves lives, much like ARGO.

The problem is that the movie just takes too long to motor through its various machinations to finally get Oz into his confrontation with the newly wicked Evanora and Theodora.  It also seems too adult for kids and too kiddie for adults - in sharp contrast to Pixar who seem to be able to entertain both groups simultaneously.  How much of the target kiddie audience really get why Evanora turned wicked, and why Oz' final victory is rather ambiguous? And how many adults were squirming with boredom during the whole munchkin, quadling city scene - in fact, for much of the final 90 minutes?

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL has a running time of 130 minutes and is rated PG in the USA.  The movie opens this weekend in Argentina, Australia, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Portugal, Macedonia  Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, Thailand, the Ukraine, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Iceland, India, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, Mongolia, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Spain, Turkey, the UK and the USA.  It opens next week in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Taiwan.

TAKE THIS WALTZ

This movie made me angry from the opening credits' sepia-tinted focus on Michelle Williams' blue-laquered toenails.  Poor Margot, it seems to say, so quirky, so right-thinking, making muffins with her face scrubbed clean.  It's like a Williamsburg dream. Except it's not.  It's a part of hipster-heaven-imagined Toronto where a young boho-wannabe couple who never seem to do much work can afford to live in a ramshackle-beautiful house interior designed just-so.  The couple are desperately irritating, right up until you realise that they are really really creepy.  They seem to have a kind of asexual buddy relationship where flirtation consists of speaking in infantile voices and drinking milk and poking fingers in your husband's mouth.  Plus the wife is clearly depressed and the husband so engrossed in making chicken cacciatore that he doesn't notice. So she starts flirting with the neighbour who is, of course!, a rickshaw driver who hangs out at the beach each morning to think.  I couldn't make this stuff up. Except he's clearly not as groovy and right-on and at peace with nature as all that because he's soon stalking her at the Y and then she's stalking him, and it all ends in the unsexiest sex-talk over martinis and a confession about nothing.  Still, as unappealing as I found the cocktease wife Margot and her stalkerish fancyman Daniel (Luke Kirby), at least there's a kind of raw honesty and commitment in their performances.  You realise that the first time you see Seth Rogen (the chicken-chef) react to his wife's confession.  Director Sarah Polley decides to do something that should showcase real acting talent - smashcut close-ups of his different reactions. Except, we learn, Rogen can't act - or at least not that kind of raw drama - he seems to be acting "at" it - and does that annoying Brad Pitt thing where you keep groping your face because that looks natural, right?  I mean, let's be clear, we have to blame Sarah Polley for this self-indulgent, risible mess, just as we lauded her for the Alzheimers drama AWAY FROM HER.  She wrote these absurdly incredible characters and their unsexy sexy language.  She exposed Rogen's inadequacies.  And in a montage designed to show Margot tiring of her new man, she reduces her film to an Ikea advert with a teenage-naive-embarrassing cut to what racy sex might actually look like.  Of course, this movie isn't as radical or subversive or raw or authentic as it thinks it is.   Chicken-man's sister turns out to be that movie cliché - the wise alcoholic.  Basically, the meaning is that we always take the weather with us.  And that very few movies live up to the Leonard Cohen song they're using.  Go home.  Go home. There's nothing to see here.    

TAKE THIS WALTZ played Toronto 2011 and Tribeca 2012. It was released earlier this year in Taiwan, the USA (Video on demand), Australia, Canada, Turkey and Sweden. It was released earlier this month in New Zealand, Japan, Denmark, Ireland, the UK, Greece, the Netherlands and Spain. It will be released in Belgium on September 19th; in France on October 31st; and in Brazil on November 9th.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN - over-hyped

There is a great movie to be made about the conflict between Marilyn Monroe and Sir Lawrence Olivier on the set of THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL. Unfortunately, MY WEEK WITH MARILYN is not it.  That is because the writer, Adrian Hodges (TOM & VIV) and director, Simon Curtis (TV's CRANFORD)  have made a decision to take the sharp edges off the drama at every turn.  Instead of the caustic wit of Colin (son of Kenneth) Clark's memoir, the movie gives us a protagonist in the classic "ingenue" line - very dull, very sweet, and hardly necessary at all as an entry point to the film's real drama.  He falls for Marilyn, she flirts with him, but it's all very tame indeed, if in fact it really happened.  

What we really want to see is Marilyn versus Larry.  The Sexy Film Star, enmeshed in the Method, desperately trying and failing to be a technically great actress, puffed up and doped up by her self-serving entourage (a particularly menacing portrayal of Paula Strasberg) versus the Great Actor, painfully aware that his time has passed, resentful he cannot set the screen alight, and in fear of hysterical women from his experiences with Vivienne Leigh.  When MY WEEK WITH MARILYN catches afire, it's because we're watching Marilyn and Larry bring out each other's insecurities - in those moments, we get a glimpse into their interior lives.  But all too often, this fascinating material is cut short for drippy dating scenes as Marilyn and young Colin skinny dip, or visit Windsor Castle.  I wanted more of the drama - more of the tension as cinema and theatre acting changed era - more of Marilyn and Arthur Miller - more of Larry and Vivienne.

The resulting film is basically shot and scripted like an afternoon movie on the Hallmark channel. And, unfortunately, it is filled with a fair few anonymous performances - from Dominic Cooper as a suffocating manager to Julia Ormond unbelievably mis-cast as Leigh.  Emma Watson is utterly wasted as Colin's parochial love interest, and Eddie Redmayne has nothing more to do than look charming and naive.  In the minor parts, it's only really Judi Dench who stands out - she oozes class as Dame Sybil Thorndike and deserves a sort of Oscar-double-whammy for her performance here and in J.EDGAR.   As for the leads, Kenneth Branagh is stunning - stunning - as Lawrence Olivier - capturing not just his particular intonation and mannerisms, but giving the towering presence in English theatre real pathos.  

All of which brings us Michelle Willams' much hyped performance as Marilyn, the subject of an Oscar campaign from the Weinsteins. Frankly, I was utterly underwhelmed. Yes she gets the breathy, tremulous voice, and yes she can sing the songs and do the moves. And yes, she appears to have put on a bit, if not enough weight.  But she problem is this - she has not got the sexy star quality that Marilyn had, and you simply can't manufacture that.  (Which is not to say she isn't a terrific actress - just look at BLUE VALENTINE).  Too often in this film we see other characters look at Marilyn and gasp in awe and envy at the way she "lights up the screen" or the "magic" she works or the way she's "full of life".  Sadly, the sign of a bad film is when people tell rather than show.  We shouldn't need this commentary.  Williams' should be doing it herself.  And I don't buy the concept that no-one can light up a screen like Marilyn today.  We have instinctive "film stars" now just as we have "technical actresses".  Sadly, I would put Michelle Williams in the latter camp.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN played New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and the AFI Fest 2011.  It opens this weekend in the US and UK. It opens on December 29th in Singapore; on December 30th in Finland; on January 5th in Portugal; on January 13th in Norway and Sweden; and on January 19th in Lebanon and the Netherlands. 

Late Review by A.H. - SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (2008)

Everyone is disappointing the more you know them.

By turns comic and poignant, the maze of love, and of the memory of love, and the idiosyncratic forms that maze takes, has been a motif of the writer Charlie Kaufman’s recent work. And yet the maze of SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK – in contrast to his previous doubling rabbit-holes – is neither internal, nor scrambled through; rather it is a large-scale theatre, a simulacrum of the city of New York, where director Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) meticulously puts on, observes, and so re-experiences the daily troubles and past disappointments in his relationships with his wives and lovers. That the protagonist is an artist considering his time with the women around him may be a nod to the familiar – but it is in the effect of this life-long, theatrical, melancholic project that the film becomes a remarkable and ambitious variation in Kaufman’s characteristically unique design.

From the opening of the film, Cotard is, as his name suggests, preoccupied with the approach of death and the disintegration of his body, which only seems to widen the tense distance between himself and his wife. He directs a successful production of Death of a Salesman, and is subsequently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship that gives him the funds to create his immense life-theatre in a disused airplane hangar. This time of achievement in his professional life is weighted by his increasingly failing health (an unending anxiety seems to surface in pustules, disturbing shakes, problems in bed), and his complex personal life, marked by absence and regret and obsession, which in turn, Escher-like, becomes material for his grand play.

Kaufman has always drawn skewed perspective brilliantly, particularly in highlighting the difference in perception within relationships, and he continues this trick in SYNECDOCHE. When Cotard’s first wife Adele (Catherine Keener), a painter, declines an invitation to attend a performance of one of her husband’s plays because she must spend time packing up her canvases for an exhibition abroad, there is a hilarious cut to a shot of her canvases in their boxes – she paints on the most miniscule of scales and the crates she uses resemble matchboxes she could pack in a few minutes. Similarly, when Cotard discovers, to his horror, that his daughter from his first marriage has become a tattooed celebrity at the age of ten, his second wife Claire (Michelle Williams) exclaims that everyone has tattoos and turns her back to lift up her shirt revealing an enormous, monstrous tattoo of her own – which Cotard then denies having ever seen.

Keener and Williams are faultless in these roles, as the rest of the cast generally tend to be whenever they are on screen. That cast includes Samantha Morton; Jennifer Jason Leigh; Hope Davis; Emily Watson; Dianne Weist; and it feels important to name the soaring ensemble here as they are each gone too swiftly. But that, achingly, is the nature of the piece. As the play comes to its end, so Kaufman’s questions become plain: where does love go? Where does life go? Their ethereal conclusion is one of the many ways this film rewards watching and, of course, re-watching.

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK played Cannes (where it was beaten to the Palme D'Or by GOMORRAH), Toronto, Chicago and London 2008. It won the award for Best First Feature and the Robert Altman Award at the Independent Spirit Awards in 2009. It went on limited release in 2008 and 2009, and is now available to rent and own.

Random DVD Round-Up 2 - MAMMOTH

In New York a young professional couple outsource childcare to a Philippino nanny.  Sure, the surgeon-mother might get angsty that her daughter has more of an emotional relationship with the nanny than with her, but there's no real solution. Meanwhile, dad is off doing business in Thailand. We believe he really loves mum. Truly. And he's a good guy. But even he can't resist casual sex. And all the while, we cut to scenes of the Philippino nanny's kids, longing for mum to come home, and shamefully neglected by people who are too busy to care.

A decade ago, Swedish writer-director, Lukas Moodysson created a movie called LILYA 4-EVER about a young girl lured into child prostitution.  It was a movie that forced us to confront an appalling social wrong but also went beyond politics by making us empathise with Lilya in an unforgettable sustained POV shot of her being serially raped.  At the time I was shocked out of complacency and full of admiration for a movie that could make an "issues film" so visceral and unforgettable.  Unfortunately, Moodysson's latest feature, MAMMOTH, is less pure, less shocking, less affecting than LILYA 4-EVER:  with its intertwining pan-national storyline feels more like the pretentious, ponderous BABEL. 

MAMMOTH's unceasingly heavy-handed examination of the cross-national labour trade is superficial and alienating - and undermines what are actually naturalistic and believable performances from Gael García Bernal, Michelle Williams and Marife Necesito.  The tragic result is that, while I can intellectually buy into why I should be angered by the issues shown in the film, I was bored rather than engaged.

MAMMOTH played Berlin 2009 and opened that year in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands and Belgium. It opened last year in Russia, Spain, Germany, Hungary and the UK. It opened earlier this year in Poland. It is available to rent and own.

BLUE VALENTINE

BLUE VALENTINE is a justifiably praised indie drama about a young couple falling in and out of love. The stories of their meeting in the early twenties, and their disintegrating marriage six years later, and presented linearly, but inter-cut. Seeing the couple in their early heady romance juxtaposed so directly with their later frustrations brings an added pathos to what would have already been an incredibly affecting, brutally closely observed story.

Ryan Gosling (HALF NELSON) and Michelle Williams (WENDY AND LUCY) both give bravura performances as Dean and Cindy, perfectly rendering portraits of their characters at two stages of life. Gosling's Dean starts off as a charming, spontaneous, caring young man, stuck in a blue-collar job but apparently not asking anything more from life. No surprise then that Cindy - stuck in a loveless home - is drawn to his open-ness and warmth - so much so that when she falls pregnant she is willing to shelve her career ambitions to make a life with him. Six years later, and Cindy is tired and frustrated - a dutiful mother and working woman. Dean's spontaneity and charm now strike her as infantile, and though faithful to the idea of marriage, she has no desire for him. Meanwhile, Dean is seemingly so content with the idea of being a husband and father that he has no desire to push himself any further in life, or any real comprehension as to his wife's new-found coldness toward him. By marrying Cindy he has achieved more than he could have ever dreamed of - the pretty middle-class girl - and perhaps the greatest sadness of the film is that while Cindy can see more, has been raised to try for more, Dean has never been given that sense of possibility.

The bold performances are matched by documentary film-maker Derek Cianfrance's choices with the camera and editing. He shoots the couple in two very different styles in each period of their life - the courtship is in wide-angled Super 16 that always seems a little bright and grainy - like watching old cine-films of your childhood. It adds to the feeling that these are old memories. The present is shot with long lenses on DV, and it feels like the camera is always positioned to give us the feeling that the two characters are caught in a confined space, and yet never in the same focus when in the frame. It's as though the camera lens is literally entrapping them in a shared space but perpetual misunderstanding.

The overall effect is one of uncomfortable voyeurism. The movie is almost an endurance test. Because we are charmed by the couple's courtship - because they are both essentially good and charming and caring people - it becomes absolutely gruelling to watch them inflict hurt after hurt upon each other for no typically Hollywood-reason - no distinct cause - but just because they have grown up, or haven't in different ways.

BLUE VALENTINE played Sundance, Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and London 2010. It is currently on release in the US, Australia, Malaysia and Canada. It opens in the UK this Friday, in Portugal on February 3rd and in Sweden on April 1st. Both Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams have been nominated for Golden Globes.

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.

SHUTTER ISLAND - the auteur's B-movie

SHUTTER ISLAND is a psychological horror film directed by Martin Scorsese and based on the popular 2003 novel by Denis Lehane. This faithful adaptation is a self-consciously old-fashioned sort of an enterprise, set in a maximum security prison for the criminally insane, in 1950s America. It deals very deeply in notions of personal and national guilt – denial and repression. The protagonist is a veteran soldier turned Federal Marshall called Teddy Daniels (Leonardo di Caprio). He has been three two traumas – being present at the liberation of Dachau, and having his wife die in an arson attack on their apartment. Nominally, he has come to Shutter Island to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a female patient/prisoner called Rachel Salondo. His real agenda is to investigate the whereabouts of the man who killed his wife though - he protests – not to take revenge – and to investigate what really happens in Ward C. The central puzzle of the film is what is the agenda of the employees of Shutter Island, not least the lead psychologists (the superbly sinister Sir Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow.)

SHUTTER ISLAND is a profoundly odd film. Just as with THE SHINING it sees an A-list auteur apply his talent to a B-movie genre – the brooding psychological thriller. All the way through the movie, I found myself being brought out of the film by the sheer quality of Martin Scorsese’s framing or Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing. I was also deeply impressed by the sophistication of the intellectual material – the conflation of personal and political guilt. But somehow, the sheer quality of the thematic material and its production mitigated against the hyper-real construction of a sinister atmosphere, through Robbie Robertson’s careful use of Mahler and the fictively sombre grey clouds hanging over the eponymous prison island with its gothic central house and proto-fascist civil war prison fort. It also mitigated against my emotional involvement with the film. Thus scenes that should be downright petrifying or deeply emotionally moving were neutered by their subvention to the tricky plot.

The movie is thus, at times, deliberately bad – especially in its opening sequences – with its self-consciously over-the-top weather effects and ludicrously over-bearing score. It is also at times extremely good – so good that it breaks the B-movie veneer. In particular, I would cite the flashback scenes to Dachau, especially the mass execution, which plays like a sort of demented ballet. At other times, Scorsese seems to be reaching for something darker and more twisted than I have seen him wrestle with before, but basically fail in that task. The way in which he treats the hallucinations and warped memories of his protagonist is beautiful and bizarre. But it brings to mind comparison with BUG and David Lynch’s recent work – not least MULHOLLAND DRIVE. I couldn’t help but wonder what a less faithful and more free-wheeling treatment of the material might have looked like in the hands of someone like Lynch.

And this brings me to my final thought on SHUTTER ISLAND: it is, after all, a beautifully made but rather conventional treatment of the subject matter. Scorsese’s art is well-honed but he is somehow a prisoner of it. He hasn’t allowed himself to truly break free and show us something so unhinged as to utterly disturb us. Neither has he subverted the B-movie horror film in the way that a Quentin Tarantino did with World War Two films in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (a film which, by the way, looks better with each passing day).

SHUTTER ISLAND premiered at Berlin 2010. It was released last weekend in the US, Argentina, Argentina, Denmark, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Russia, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, Lithuania, Norway, Spain and Sweden. It is released this weekend in Belgium, France, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Israel, New Zealand, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Austria, Estonia, Iceland, Taiwan and Venezuela. It opens on March 5th in Switzerland, Hungary, Brazil and Italy. It opens on March 12th in the UK, Egypt, Mexico and Turkey. It opens on March 18th in South Korea and on March 26th in Poland. It opens in April 9th in Japan and on April 15th in Singapore.

Call me a heartless bastard but I was bored witless by WENDY AND LUCY

Wendy is a young woman with no history and a family that is indifferent toward her. In addition, she has a clapped-out car, a dog called Lucy, a kind soul, and precisely enough money to get her to seasonal work in Alaska. This film comprises eighty minutes of masochistic liberal angst, in which Wendy's car breaks down, she can't afford the repairs, she gets arrested for shoplifting, and loses her dog in the process. Evidently, we're meant to feel desperately sorry for Wendy. She's one step away from homelessness and the system doesn't so much oppress her as just not give a shit. And this film wants us to empathise so badly, it hits us over the head with just how pathetic Wendy is. Feel its earnestness in the pure realism of Kelly Reichardt's direction! Feel it's aching heart in Michelle Williams' uglied-up haircut and tragic face! Be manipulated by the scene in which Wendy has to give up her pet dog Lucy!

WENDY AND LUCY is a masochistic, manipulative, one-note film. Over-hyped and by far not as profound as it thinks it is.

OLD JOY played Cannes, Toronto and London 2008 and was released in the US last year. It was released earlier this year in Croatia and is currently on release in the UK. It opens on Australia on March 26th in Australia; and on April 8th in France.

Random DVD Round-Up 5 - IMAGINARY HEROES

Derivative and poorly directed drama about a disfuntional suburban family dealing with teen suicide is elevated by strong performances by matriarch Sigourney Weaver and a troubled young Emile Hirsch.

IMAGINARY HEROES played Toronto 2004 and was released in 2004 and 2005. It is available on DVD.

DECEPTION - beware lawyers bearing weed

DECEPTION is a nicely shot and decently acted thriller that's ultimately skewered by a plot so transparent it could've come sponsored by Swarovski.

Ewan Macgregor stars as an introverted auditor who's offered a pass into a glamourous world of anonymous sex by a suave lawyer (Hugh Jackman). Turns out, Jackman's character is using the hot sex to blackmail the auditor into embezzling money from a client.

For the most part, this is a fairly ordinary but workable thriller but in the final half hour it truly jumps the shark. I can buy that the auditor has the smarts to put up a fight, but would he really have the Mission Impossible skills to get his hands on a fake US passport at 2 hours notice? The film-makers also commit the unforgiveable sin of wasting Charlotte Rampling.

Overall rating: Meh.

DECEPTION is on release in the US, UK and Australia. It opens in May in Belgium, and France; in Singapore and Finland in June; and in Germany in September.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - Visually stunning love story

Hollywood loves love stories. Take a look at your local cineplex and you'll find romantic comedies, a movie about a love affair between a ten-ton gorilla and a blonde chick, and even a romance between a landscape gardener and a coma victim. But up until Brokeback Mountain, we have never had a honest-to-goodness love story between a gay couple.* So, even if this film weren't any good, there would be a good chance of it getting recognised by the Academy on pure political correctness grounds. It is one of the many paradoxes in Hollywood: studio executives balk from financing ground-breaking dramas that tackle prejudice head-on. Instead, they pile money into sure-fire cash-earning gun-and-titty movies. However, when it comes to casting their votes for the Oscars, time and time again they vote for the very same "brave", "arty" movies.

Anyways, political correctness aside, Brokeback Mountain is among a handful of films that have made 2005 a vintage year for cinema. The movie tells the story of a twenty-year love affair between two cowboys, who cannot reveal their love for fear of violent reprisals. Unlike the heavy-handed movies, The Constant Gardener and Good Night and Good Luck, Brokeback Mountain does not force its profundity onto the viewer. It tells an evocative story and allows the wider implications to resonate with the viewer rather than hitting us over the head with a civics lesson.

Two things should be noted about this movie. First, the breathtaking photography of Brokeback Mountain itself. The movie was shot by the Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prierto. He has shot a string of fantastic movies, including Amores Perros, Frida, 8 Mile, 25th Hour, 21 Grams and Alexander and surely deserves an Oscar for Brokeback. The second notable feature of this movie is the wonderful performance by Heath Ledger as Ennis Delmar, the shy and naive cowboy who is initiated into homosexuality by Jake Gyllenhaal. With this perfomance, Ledger has declared himself one of the finest actors of his generation.

The only real flaw I can find with Brokeback, and it is a flaw, is the somewhat weak performance of the "other" cowboy. Jake Gyllenhaal leapt to fame in cult-hit Donnie Darko and since then has been, well, underwhelming in mediocre flicks such as The Day After Tomorrow, Jarhead and Proof. In those cases, I assumed that bad directors had failed to extract his talent, but in this case there is less excuse. Where Gyllenhaal's accent fluctuates and his acting looks mannered and obvious, Ledger is a study in subsuming the self to the role. If Gyllenhaal's acting, or lack thereof, prevents Brokeback from being a truly great movie, it is nonetheless a very good one. I urge you to go see it and if possible, on the biggest screen you can find.

Brokeback Mountain premiered at Venice, and has since gone on nationwide release in the US and on limited release in the UK. It goes on general release in the UK on the 13th January 2006, in France on the 18th January and in Germany on the 9th March.

*The cinephiles among you will point to the Oscar-winning drama, Boys Don't Cry, which featured a romance between a straight girl and another girl who pretended to be a boy. I think this doesn't count not because of the sexual niceties of what was going on but because Boys Don't Cry was more political drama than simple love story. In other words, there was far more screen time awarded to beating up the "freak" than to the relationship between the two girls.

The Annie Proulx short story on which Brokeback Mountain was based can be found, in full, here.