THE FRONT RUNNER - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Day Six

In 1988 Gary Hart was the charming, popular Democratic candidate running against George HW Bush for the president. The Oval Office was his to lose, and that he did, when he was exposed as having an affair with a young woman called Donna Rice. More than is typical, it wasn't the crime but the cover-up - his stubborn refusal to admit that he was morally culpable - his privileged outrage that the press even had the temerity to ask him about adultery. This film does a great job of showing that complete tone-deafness to the reality of then-modern politics.  That you can't hide your poor judgment and immorality behind a facade of gentlemen's silence anymore. That the press aren't your friends (as he was in fact a friend of Bob Woodward) but sceptics who should expose your malfeasance.  

THE FRONT RUNNER is a new film by director Jason Reitman (THANK YOU FOR SMOKING) and a script by Reitman, Jay Carson and Matt Bai.  The movie is whip smart and technically superb. It's opening hour has a kinetic feel that perfectly sums up the shabbiness and chaos of the campaign trail and makes you feel like you're living on those campaign buses and inside the WashPost editorial room.  It feels like Reitman was going for a Robert Altman vibe - lots of layered voices -a lens that shifts curiously from conversation to conversation. The effect is a collage of impressions and moments that build to a nuanced understanding of the issues and events.

What I really liked was the very light way in which the deeper issues of gender politics and power imbalances were handled in this film - typically through the female characters who act as its conscience.  In the WashPost newsroom the one female editor tells the naive young trail reporter that Hart's lapse of judgement matters - and wonders if anyone has heard from Rice.  In the Hart campaign, it's the young woman who's left to shepherd Rice back to Miami - and actually tries to protect her thereafter, and gives an honest answer to Hart's belated inquiry after her. Most of all, it's Vera Farmiga as Hart's wife Lee who embodies the moral highground with a quiet but rage-filled performance. And while I've been reading a lot about Hugh Jackman potentially being nominated for this performance (he's fine but nothing special), for me it's Farmiga who deserves the plaudits. 

My only real criticism of this film is that it really lost pace in Week Three of the campaign when the scandal comes out. Maybe it was just hard to sustain the very fast-pace of the opening hour, but I strongly feel that it could lose at least ten minutes of its final, say, 45 minutes. This seems to be a repeat offence for Reitman - his films often start strong and then sort of fizzle out. 

THE FRONT RUNNER has a running time of 105 minutes and is rated R.  It played Toronto and London 2018. It will be released in the USA on November 7th and in the UK on January 25th 2019. 

THE JUDGE

So I suppose when you earn shedloads of cash for a major studio as Iron Man, you get to create whichever vanity project you like.  And for Robert Downey Junior, it's this polished but ultimately overlong and unexciting thriller, THE JUDGE.  The self-consciously quality product start RDJ as a flash lawyer in a mid-life crisis who returns to his home town, where his cranky dad, the titular judge, is suspected for a hit-and-run murder. Naturally, the super-smart son, John Grisham-like in his smarmy brilliance, reconnects with his estranged father through the medium of sun-dappled flashbacks with trite piano music. There are two points when I thought the movie would pick up its pace and intensity. The first is when Grace Zabriskie, famous to Lynch fans as the hysterical mother of Laura Palmer, turns up as the enraged mother of the victim. At the point, the movie had the chance to do something new and off the charts, but no. The second point was when Billy Bob Thornton turned up as the prosecutor.  But not this was just high polish high profile stunt casting, and BBT just phoned his performance in.  So here's where the movie jumps the shark. About an hour in, the mid-life crisis lawyer meets his old flame, the wonderful Vera Farming, and she turns out to be the mum of the teenage waitress (Leighton Meester) he just banged.  It's not just that this is a cheesy and skeezy plot line but that it shows a complete lack of directorial judgment on the part of David Dobkin (THE WEDDING CRASHERS). Why try so hard to make a sleek, serious courtroom drama and then just kill its tone with a cheap and awkward gag?  The only ONLY time I've ever seen a successful and funny courtroom drama was MY COUSIN VINNY and this ain't that.

THE JUDGE has a running time of 141 minutes and is rated R.  The film is on global release.

AT MIDDLETON aka JUST ONE DAY

AT MIDDLETON is a gentle romantic comedy starring Vera Farmiga (BATES MOTEL) and Andy Garcia (OCEAN'S ELEVEN) as two middle aged parents who fall in love while taking their kids (Taissa Farmiga and Spencer Lofranco) on a tour of Middleton College.  The romance plays as a conventional odd couple love story, with Garcia playing a conservative doctor and Farmiga playing the more free spirited Edith. There are lots of rom-com conventions at play here. They meet in an argument and are initially dismissive of each other. There are lots of cute scenes where they discover they like each other.  There's even the classic "he's afraid of heights but she'll help him" skit that we saw between Ryan and Marissa in The O.C.  And yes, there's a cute and irreverent scene involving chopsticks.  I also wouldn't have picked these two actors for a movie that involves physical comedy. 

And yet, and yet... There's something about these two actors that is authentic and the character of the doctor in particular is deeply sympathetic.  And I also like that the children are given a story arc, but not an easy cheesy love story.  The daughter in particular is fascinating - a high achieving kid who wants to study with a famous professor - and the meeting between the two is really worth watching.  So I wouldn't say that this film is a must-watch but for a lazy Sunday afternoon it's somehow more than it seems.  And by the way, the R rating is utterly unwarranted. 

AT MIDDLETON has a running time of 99 minutes and is rated R.  The movie is available to rent and own in the UK and USA and will be released in Spain on March 13th.

SOURCE CODE - a lot less clever than it thinks it is

Duncan Jones' directorial debut, MOON was a beautifully crafted, emotionally powerful, low-budget sci-fi flick that was arguably one of the best films of 2009. As a result, his new film SOURCE CODE has been met with a lot of good-will on the part of the critical fraternity and has led to what are, in my opinion, overly generous reviews. Because SOURCE CODE is, essentially, a rather simple-minded, emotionally uninvolving movie full of plot holes, featuring at least one awful acting performance and saddled with a piss-poor Hollywood ending. Overall, it's enjoyable enough as a sort of lo-rent thriller, but it's neither good sci-fi, nor a follow-up film worthy of MOON. I am deeply, deeply disappointed.

The set-up of the film, written by Ben Ripley, is half way between Quantum Leap and that Denzel Washington-Tony Scott time-travel/CSI thriller DEJA VU. Jake Gyllenhaal plays an army officer called Colter Stevens who is parlayed by some sci-fi gimcrack into the mind of a commuter called Sean on a morning train to Chicago. That train is about to be blown up by a terrorist as a warning shot before an even bigger dirty bomb goes off in the city. The army keeps sending Colter back into Sean's body for eight minute segments  to find the identity of the bomber so that he can be apprehended before the second attack. But it is made very clear to Colter that he can't change what's already happened - the people on that train must die - and just because Colter has the hots for Sean's girlfriend Christina (Michelle Monaghan), he can't save her life.

Duncan Jones deftly handles the first half of the film. The repeated eight minutes segments on the train, that repeat in variations, GROUNDHOG DAY style, are never dull. There are some wonderfully innovative tracking shots in the confined space and good use of editing. Kudos also to Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan for giving those segments a sense of urgency and intimacy. But I started to lose interest badly in the second half of the flick for a number of reasons. First up, the first big plot reveal - about how Colter ended up in the Source Code - could be spotted a mile off. Second, if Colter knows the bomber has to leave the train to set off the second bomb, why does he bother interrogating people on the train? Third, the introduction of Jeffrey Wright's Evil Scientist character was just thin two-dimensional writing, and his performance as hammy as hell. Fourth, the character of the army-officer-with-a-conscience was similarly thinly written. And poor Vera Farmiga was simply an age-appropriate delivery device. Fifth, the ending. I think even those who really love this film will agree that there is a natural place where this film should end, and yet it goes on for another five minutes in what I can only assume was a studio intervention.

The upshot - disappointment with what was basically a mediocre thriller with a ham-fisted ending and no real ingenuity in its handling of its sci-fi or emotional material.

SOURCE CODE is on release in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, the Philippines, Taiwan, the UK, the US, the Czech Republic, Kuwait, Serbia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Iceland, Turkey and Spain. It opens later in April in Portugal, France, Spain, Hong Kong, Hungary, Malaysia, Singapore, Greece, Italy and Norway. It opens in May in India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Finland. It opens on June 2nd in Germany; on June 9th in the Netherlands; on June 16th in Denmark and on August 5th in Sweden.

London Film Fest Day 5 - UP IN THE AIR

My friends typically work for former-I-banks, private equity houses and fund managers, and travel to at least one European or long-haul destination per week. They are nice, interesting people but every time we get together the conversation at some point descends into comparing airline frequent flyer programmes, blackberries and check-listing the best restaurants and concierges in various European capitals. We are the cohort that knows exactly the quickest route through any airport and always turn left upon boarding. But that's not all there is to life. Some have kids - some an unhealthy obsession with movies. We are all aware that the big corporates target insecure over-achievers: smart young graduates who will so identify with the corporate brand that their self-esteem lies in the coolness of their new laptop and how many miles they fly per year. It's as though the apparently elite status they have been sold compensates for working insane hours. Stick with it, kid, and one day you TOO can become a Lufthansa Hons member and make Managing Director. We too were once shiny bright 23 year olds, unleashed upon the world with dreams of summer houses and Porsche Cayennes. Ten years later, the 2001 dotcom crash and the credit crunch later, heartbreak, marriages, divorces have come and gone, and we'll settle. And no, it doesn't seem like failure.

I give you this little round-up to tell you that when it comes to reviewing UP IN THE AIR - the new romantic comedy from THANK YOU FOR SMOKING director Jason Reitman, I know whereof I speak, and I know whereof he speaks. Problem is, I think he's set up a straw man. The fact that he occasionally hits the mark with some biting dialogue doesn't make up for it.

Reitman's central character is a mono-dimensional corporate man called Bingham (Clooney). He's the classic air-miles junkie, happiest in the air, avoiding a real relationship with his family or a potential girlfriend at all costs. The movie is about how he reacts when he falls for a whip-smart woman who is just as career-focused as he is (Vera Farmiga). Along the way, he realises just what a shitty profession he is in (a consultant brought in to fire people) when he sees it afresh through the eyes of the new hire (Anna Kendrick). Reitman has Bingham go through one of those classic rom-com epiphanies, where the caricatured hard-ass central character realises it might actually be nice to have a relationship with someone. (See THE PROPOSAL, THE FAMILY STONE, MANAGEMENT et hoc genus omne). It even comes complete with a running through the night to tell the one you love that you love them scene. I only just forgave Reitman for that hackneyed move. The problem is that the really interesting dynamic isn't about ultra career focused people suddenly realising they'd like a relationship. It's about people, like the new hire, who do want both, know they want both, but can't seem to make it work out. That's the rub.

Anyways, let's be generous and grant that Jason Reitman's fictive career-focused lone wolf is credible and interesting. Given that, how does the movie work out? Well, I like the overall bleak tone, especially the final act twist. Totally brought it back from the rom-com vibe I was getting in the penultimate act. I also really like the way in which Reitman plays the scene between the career woman at 23 and the career woman at 33: very psychologically accurate and superbly done. Other than that, I thought the movie contained too much dead air, and much like THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, wasn't even in tone. Ultimately, I wasn't engaged by the characters, because the central struggle didn't seem real to me, and I thought Reitman didn't really have the balls to deal with the critique implicit in his subject matter of mass lay-offs. It all felt rather exploitative.

UP IN THE AIR played Toronto 2009. It opens in November in the USA. It opens in January 2010 in Australia, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, Russia and Denmark. It opens in February 2010 in Mexico, Turkey, Hungary and Singapore. It opens in Finland on March 19th.

ORPHAN – Who thinks this shit up?

Orphan isn’t a horror movie. It isn’t scary. It tries to be, it tries desperately.

I’m not saying Orphan is a bad film – it passes the time and keeps the audience engaged and vaguely interested. The characters aren’t wholly unbelievable, the script is decent, it’s not gratuitous or unnecessarily gory. But it’s not scary – and that leaves you asking: what is it then?

Is it a psychological thriller? The character development isn’t strong enough for that. Is it an examination of paranoia and fear in a dysfunctional marriage? It’s not deep enough for that.

No, this film is a hodge-podge. It’s a kinda original but ultimately failed attempt by Jaume Collet-Serra, in his first major directorial release, to combine the two major plot-lines of all good horror films: the evil child and the usurping, jealous female intruder. It’s sort of “Children of the Corn” meets “Hand that rocks the cradle” – it tries to play into the two most basic fears of womanhood – your children being in danger, and your husband being stolen.

Sadly the combination is ultimately ridiculous – you find yourself actually laughing at the climactic scenes – the resolution is ultimately unsatisfying because you just don’t believe anyone would think of making a plot that silly.

In some ways, it’s a big missed opportunity. Had the film firmly opted for psychological thriller rather than falling between stools – it could have been strong. The themes of marital infidelity, suspicion, alcoholism, child neglect, paranoia, paedophilia, and personality disorders are genuinely dark and deeply disturbing. But the film doesn’t have the balls to take a chance on these and run with them – and ultimately cops out and becomes yet another 2-dimensional shock-flick.

That’s not to say I didn’t have fun – I did. It passed the time, and was mildly entertaining. Just don’t get your hopes up for a fright or for intellectual satisfaction. It delivers neither.

ORPHAN is on release in the US, UK, Canada, the Philippines, Taiwan, Puerto Rico, Ireland, Panama, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and South Africa. It opens in September in Malaysia, Serbia, Brazil, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela, India, Argentina, Greece, Slovakia, Poland and Japan. It opens in October in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Russia, Iceland, Spain, Austria, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania and Portugal. It opens in November in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand and in December in Belgium.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS - an immaculately-made, disturbing film (*spoilers*)

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS is, deep breath, a film about the Holocaust for children, based upon a book that is now being taught in British schools. The fact that it may be on your child's book list shouldn't make you complacent about taking them to see it. It's a disturbing picture and seeing things on the big screen can be more horrific than reading them on a page. It's important to teach this history but please be aware that the film-makers do not pander to their audience in the final ten minutes. If you need further information you can check out the PBBFC information here.

Ok. Public Service Announcement over, we can get back to the review. THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS is a deeply affecting, well-made drama aimed at children, but worth watching as an adult. The movie is told from the point of view of an eight-year old boy called Bruno, and the film-makers are careful to introduce the details of the Holocaust very slowly. The first time we see Bruno's father he isn't in uniform. He just looks like a normal dad. And it helps that the mostly British cast choose not to play it with caricature German accents. Still, Bruno is an observant child and he can tell that his grandma isn't happy with his father's decision to move the family to the countryside. Once in the new house, Bruno is frustrated and lonely. He manages to sneak out of the house and stumbles upon the electric fence of a "farm" where everyone wears "striped pyjamas".

The clever thing is that none of the adults lie to Bruno. The assumptions that he makes about the prisoners and the nature of the camp are all logical and plausible when viewed from the perspective of an innocent young boy who falls back on the presumption that his dad is a good man. Even when Bruno starts speaking to Schmuel, an 8-year old prisoner, he is slow to catch on. So long as you can grant the film-makers the initial conceit that these two boys could have met, the rest of the movie flows naturally. Their conversations, rationalisations, mistakes and reconciliation have an air of authenticity.

The denouement comes swiftly and, for adults, with a grim sense of what the end will be. The grim inevitability and sheer horror is enhanced by James Horner's tremendous orchestral score which builds to a literal scream. I was surprised by just how straightforward the film was and just how affecting the end was. This is surely as it should be. This is the sort of film that you don't leave the cinema talking about with your friends. You walk home in silence, considering what you've seen.

Kudos to novelist John Boyne and screen-writer, director Mark Herman for having the judgement to bring this to the screen. Herman in particular deserves praise for getting good performances from the two young boys, Asa Butterfield and Jack Scanlon. David Thewlis and Vera Farmiga are typically good as the parents, but we also get a very powerful cameo from Sheila Hancock as the grandmother. I also thought this was the first film in which Rupert Friend gave a very convincing and nuanced performance.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS is on release in the UK. It opens on September 26th in Spain; on October 3rd in Ireland; on November 7th in the USA; on January 23rd in Norway; on February 12th in Argentina; and on April 2nd in Germany.

BREAKING AND ENTERING - Minghella bites off more than he can chew

Anthony Minghella's new film, BREAKING AND ENTERING is not quite up to the grand subjects and aspirations it sets itself, but is a compelling relationship drama nonetheless. That drama is set resolutely in London - the London of immigrant crime, prostitutes and that dirty of dirty words, "regeneration". And Minghella must be praised for rendering the back alleys of London's King Cross with as much menace as the back alleys of Venice in THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY. The score is also brilliantly judged.

In this world, Jude Law plays an architect called Will whose long-time partner is a beautiful Swedish woman (Robin Wright Penn). The relationship is crumbling because she cannot quite trust Will to look after her autistic daughter and resents his feelings of neglect. Will works at an architecture firm in Kings Cross whose computers keep being nicked. He follows one of the thieves - a young Bosnian kid - and ends up seducing his mother, played by Juliette Binoche. He does not tell her he knows her son is a thief.

Where this movie works is in its depiction of complex modern relationships - long-term partners with step-children. Jude Law is fine but he is acted off the screen by Robin Wright Penn and Juliette Binoche. The movie also has a deep vein of deadpan humour, supplied by Martin Freeman in a cameo re-run of his character in THE OFFICE. Better still, Vera Farmiga - who I hated in THE DEPARTED - is astoundingly good and wickedly funny in her role as a prostitute. She really elevates the movie and it is a shame when her character drops out of focus.

But the movie fails almost everywhere else. Accents aside, the immigrant story does not feel anchored in fact and minutely observed cultural details. The love story between the white architect and the african cleaner is picked up and tossed aside - as if Minghella's knows this is an interesting contemporary story but has neither the time nor the familiarity with the subject matter to flesh it out. The entire final 40 minutes is a mess - and badly needs a script doctor. The characters do things that seem contrary to their personalities - and the denouement seems - SPOILER ALERT - cobbled together in order to give closure to the protagonist with not a care for the treatment of Binoche's character. This makes the final scene of happy families in the architecture firm stick in the throat.

Finally, what we have is a relationship drama that sort of works surrounded and obscured by bigger social issues that are never convincingly portrayed. If you want a document of social life in London - check out DIRTY PRETTY THINGS - a far better movie all round.

BREAKING AND ENTERING played Toronto and London 2006. It opens in the UK on November 10th and in the US on December 8th. It opens in Australia, Denmark, Belgium, France, Spain, Argentina, the Netherlands, Germany and Brazil in January 2007. It opens in Italy in March 2007.

THE DEPARTED - subtle, it ain't

Why remake an already much-heralded brilliant Hong Kong thriller? Because people in the West won't read subtitles? I just don't get it. But I really wanted to give THE DEPARTED a chance because the basic concept is so cool that any chance to revisit it is a pleasure.

In this version, Leonardo di Caprio plays a young cop from a mixed-up background who is recruited by Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg's characters to infiltrate the Irish mafia. No other cops know his real identity. di Caprio does well in the organisation but finds the violence and deceit are getting to him. He turns in increasing desperation to an attractive shrink and his bosses - he wants his identity back. Meanwhile, the Irish gang-leader - a sleazy mass-murderer called Costello (Jack Nicholson), has planted a mole in the State police service. That mole, played by Matt Damon, is ironically tasked with finding out who the mole in the police service is. So begins a cat and mouse game in which each side knows there is a leak and the two moles run ever decreasing circles around each other.

In this movie, Martin Scorsese stays pretty close to the plot of INFERNAL AFFAIRS but tinkers with the delicate balance of the original. He spends a lot more time on the back story of the characters and on their relationships with a shrink - a big mistake as it holds the movie up, and focuses attention on the one weak link in the acting. Scorsese also beefs up the role of Costello - the gang leader. As a result, whereas INFERNAL AFFAIRS was about two men and their relationship with each other in absentia, THE DEPARTED is really about each man's relationship with Costello.

Which brings me to my real problem with this movie. Scorsese takes a movie that is subtle, emotionally searing and actually not that violent and transforms it into a movie loud, violent mess. And no-where is this more evident than in the characterisation of Costello - the mob boss played by Jack Nicholson. Nicholson gives the kind of performance we have come to expect over the last few decades. He verges on self-parody - almost at times playing The Joker from Batman - not least when literally bearing his teeth and trying to sniff out a rat in his organisation. The egregiousness of the movie is summed up by the fact that, when the final climactic scene reuniting the two moles occurs, we are too benumbed to be blown away by it. Indeed, the audience in the screening I attended laughed at the unintentional humour of the bombastic closing scenes. And then we have the closing shot of the movie, that literally has a rat running along a balcony. I mean, could you lay the symbolism on any heavier?

Which is not to say that this is not an accomplished movie. Scorsese is backed up by his usual high-class crew. The camera is operated by Michael Ballhaus, Thelma Schoonmaker cuts the movie. Sandy Powell does the costumes and Krista Zea does the producton design. That means we get the fluid camera-work that Scorsese is known for and some gritty Boston-looking locales. But frankly, as beautiful as this movie sometimes looks, it's no match for Christopher Doyle's work in the original. And that can be said for the acting too. Leonardo di Caprio gives a career-best performance as Billy Costigan, but it still pales in comparison with the subtlety and emotional depth that Tony Leung brought to the same role. Matt Damon is just fine. He doesn't set the pulse racing in the way he did in RIPLEY or Andy Lau did in the original. In smaller roles, Ray Winstone, Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin are given little to do. And as I said before, I have big problems with Jack Nicholson's choices. The only guy I thought was outstanding was Mark Wahlberg.

Overall, I found THE DEPARTED over long, dreary, heavy-handed and a riot where we could have had a much quiter, much more affecting movie. I was prepared to take it on its own merits and not compare it with the original - and I only wish that Scorsese had come up with a good Scorsese movie - big and loud yes, but gripping and unforgettable. Instead, we just get this over-blown mess.

THE DEPARTED opens this week in the Philppines, Malaysia, russia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, The UK and the US. It opens next week in Indonesia, Asutralia, New Zealand, Singapore, Estonia and Latvia and the week after in Italy and Spain. It opens in November in Iceland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France and Israel. It opens in Germany, Sweden and Belgium in December; in Argentina and Poland in January 2007 and in Japan in March 2007.