THE DROP - LFF14 - Day Four

THE DROP is an extreeeeeemely slow burning thriller with a fantastic punchline that probably comes about ten minutes too late for the audience. Still, it's well-made, well-acted and as grimy as one would hope from a film based on a Denis Lehane novel.

The film stars Tom Hardy (BRONSON) as Bob - a bartender in Brooklyn so self-effacing he almost looks mentally challenged.  As the film opens he rescues a small battered puppy from the trash can of a similarly vulnerable woman called Nadia (Noomi Rapace - PROMETHEUS).  Naturally they bond, but incredibly slowly as only two introverts can. Meanwhile, the personality hole is filled by James Gandolfini playing a kind of comically unsuccessful version of Tony Soprano - the guy who thought he was something, but was never the guy who was feared, and ultimately ended up losing his bar to the local Brooklyn Chechen gang. This kind of sets up the story. We have the bar being used as a drop for mafia money that some or other people are trying to knock off. We have Nadia's psychokiller ex boyfriend Eric trying to get his dog and girlfriend back. And in the midst of it we have mild-mannered long-suffering Bob.

To say more would ruin the plot twist but all I would say is to go in patient and delighting in the language and the pauses and then just hold on to the finale.  Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and Matthias Schoenaarts in the three main roles seem, to me at least, to do a great job with their Brooklyn accents and to utterly feel their roles. Gandolfini is a a bit more on autopilot but let's not disrespect the man in his final film.  Is the film perfect? By no means. But the payoff is worth it, even if it takes some getting to.

THE DROP played Toronto and London 2014. It was released earlier this year in the USA, Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg and Spain. It opens later this month in Singapore, Azerbaijan, Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia, Estonia and Kenya. It opens in November in Greece, France, the Philippines, Armenia, Australia, Belarus, Hong Kong, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, the UK, Ireland, Poland, South Africa, Portugal, Taiwan, Vietnam, New Zealand, and Norway. It opens in Germany on December 4th, Finland on December 5th, Argentina on December 11th, the Czech Republic and Slovakia on January 8th, and Italy on March 19th.

THE FALLING - LFF14 - Day Four

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

THE FALLING is a bad film. Badly conceived. Badly acted. A movie that we laugh at rather than laugh with, and that we shouldn't be laughing at or with at all.   It never recovers from the early exit of its most charismatic actress and the conceit of a Crucible-style fit of teenage hysteria is so risibly executed that it becomes absurd but in a bad way. The fiftieth time a girl fainted I said "fuck it" and was sorely tempted to walk out.

So what's the story? It's 1960s England and in a girl's school Lydia (Maisie Williams) is transfixed by her more glamorous and dangerous best friend Abbie (Florence Pugh).  This borderline erotic longing for notice manifests as jealousy as Abbie sleeps with Lydia's brother, and receives the notice of Lydia's agoraphobic mother (Maxine Peake).  Act One of the play sees us experience the raw charisma (and it has to be said superbly naturalistic performance by the actress) of Abbie and when she leaves the film never quite recovers from the whole that she creates.  Moreover, the film lurches from tense psychosexual coming-of-age drama into an attempt at a kind of creepy noir horror as schoolgirls start fainting and having seizures. Is it faked? Is it hysteria? Is there something supernatural going on, as hinted out by the white magic interests of Lydia's brother.  To be frank, after yet another absurdly staged scene of fainting fits in the school hall I really didn't care.

I suspect that what the director Carol Morley (DREAMS OF A LIFE) was trying to go for was a kind of repressed emotions transmitted through acting out culminating in an explosion and epiphany at the end.  If so, the casting is wrong.  Where Florence Pugh is natural and entrancing and Maxine Peake is subtle, traumatised and deeply moving, Maisie Williams acts in a manner that is just altogether too big. I wonder if this is a consequence of her GAME OF THRONES experience where the kind of massive scale epic fantasy requires a kind of larger-than-life performance. At any rate, the director's job is to curb any performances that unbalance the rest of the piece.

Overall, not a great film and a great disappointment after the deeply moving and important DREAMS OF A LIFE.  

THE FALLING has a running time of 102 minutes. The movie does not yet have a commercial release date.

MR TURNER - LFF14 - Day Four

If ever there was a movie that deserved to be seen on the big screen it's Mike Leigh's MR TURNER. It's a character study of the celebrated Victorian painter in the latter years of his life and one of the chief triumphs of the film is to depict the English landscape and seascape with all the luminosity and beauty that Turner himself achieved. It comes as no surprise, then, to see Dick Pope win the cinematography prize at Cannes this year. 

The other of the film's award winners was Timothy Spall, who plays the painter through all of his moods and guises.  We see him as the doting son of his ailing daddy - joyous as the "old cove" comes to greet him after a trip to Holland.  We see him as the suave house guest of his aristocratic patron.  We see him utterly in command at the height of his career in a tour de force scene where he whistles through the Royal Academy as the Big Cheese, bestowing praise and advice and a mischievous thumb to the nose of Mr Constable.  We also see Turner as the intellectual - the man who won't be goaded by that pretentious pipsqueak Mr Ruskin into criticising the great painters of the past.  

But the great thing about this film is that it allows us to see the other side of the Turner  - the casual cruelty with which he denies the existence of his illegitimate daughters or uses his maid with almost bestial grunts - or makes a literal grab for his Margate landlady Mrs Booth.  His treatment of Constable is petty and mean, and while Haydon is a deeply irritating and proud man, he's also an artist that Turner might have done more to help.

Still, this is ultimately a sympathetic portrait. We feel the genuine warmth of his relationship with his daddy and the genuine talent of capturing the beauty not just of nature but of modernity.  But where the movie really gets us is in it final hour when Turner's star begins to fade.  His paintings become more ambitious and technically audacious as he strives to capture light at the expense of form.   We see the artist become a kind of joke in his own time - mocked by everyone from Queen Victoria to the working classes in a music hall.  The question is how far Turner was engaged in a deliberate throwing off of firm or how far he was affected by physical decline - notably the deterioration of eyesight from his diabetes.  (There's an excellent article on this subject here.) Suffice to say that the film is far more interested in the emotional impact of this than making a definitive argument either way.

As ever, Mike Leigh has approached his topic with insight, humanity and wonderful good humour. This is no stuffy period piece.  The language is a delight, and it's worth paying the price of admission just to see the contempt with which Turner's maid starts poking at bluebottles on a muslin cloth. Is she the most memorable and tragicomic put-upon servant since Baldrick? Ultimately, though, this movie is all about Timothy Spall. It's yet another superb, moving and memorable performance in a long career full of great performances, many of which are in Mike Leigh films.

MR TURNER has a running time of 149 minutes. The movie played Cannes where Timothy Spall won the Best Actor prize and cinematographer Dick Pope won the Vulcain Prize for the Technical Artist. It also played Telluride, Toronto and London 2014. It will be released in the UK and Ireland on October 31st, in Germany on November 6th, in France on December 3rd, in Belgium on December 10th, in the Netherlands on December 11th, in the USA on December 16th, in Sweden on December 25th, in Norway on January 9th, in Australia on January 22nd, and in Denmark on April 16th.

GONE GIRL

GONE GIRL isn’t as frightening or as visually inventive as David Fincher’s previous films. It doesn’t deliver that gut-punch head-fuck of brilliance that stays with you over repeated viewings. The movie, though technically accomplished, doesn’t push the envelope technically or strike one as self-consciously modern. Worse still, it’s a movie based on a bizarrely popular and intensely badly written thriller by Gillian Flynn - a book so bad at the sentence level I only forced myself to read it to inform this review. The poor quality source material hampers Fincher in two ways. First, even those who haven’t read the book probably know whodunnit and how. Second, even with all of Fincher’s intelligence brought to bear, there are certain leaps of faith and improbability that trouble the careful viewer.

For the very few out there who don’t know, however, GONE GIRL is a contemporary thriller centred on the married couple Nick and Amy Dunne. They fall in love and marry but years later they have descended into mutual dissatisfaction - something that we might at first believe is caused by financial difficulties after they both lose their jobs and move back to Missouri, making Amy a fish out of water. However, as book-readers will know, the conceit of the novel and film is that for the first half both Nick and X are unreliable narrators. It turns out that he is adulterous and selfish and that she has a history of seeking extravagantly worked out revenge on men who get in her way.

What carries this movie is the central performance of Rosamund Pike who has to play five shades of her character: the young girl who falls for the handsome writer; the disaffected and calculating housewife; the frumpy “gone girl” on the lam; the ultra-glamorous Sharon-Stone-esque murderer; and finally the icy cold but contained returned wife. At each stage, even thought we know what happens next, we are captivated by her narcissism, cruelty and slipperiness. It’s just plain impressive to see her alter her physicality and demeanour to encompass the roles.

Sadly everyone else in the film is just reflective paper for her to work off of. Affleck and Carrie Coons are credible and just fine as the twins upon whom the accusations of murder fall. Missi Pyle is just fine as the by now cinematic cliche of shamelessly ratings-seeking muck-raking journalist. And Tyler Perry is - well - himself. The most ill-used actor is however Neil Patrick Harris as Amy's obsessive high school boyfriend Desi. He’s just a cartoonish stalker in a classy suit. I mean, there was something melodramatically over the top and stupid about his final scenes, but was anyone still taking it seriously at that point? If so, only because of Rosamund Pike.

Ultimately, the film is worth watching. It’s compelling and well-made. Will it be remembered among Fincher’s cannon? No. It cannot surprise the rather thin and trite finger-pointing at the media and the decidedly implausible plot. But I guess at least Hollywood knows who to turn to when it comes to the inevitable BASIC INSTINCT remake.

GONE GIRL has a running time of 149 minutes and is rated R. It is on global release.

LISTEN UP PHILIP - LFF14 - Day Three

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

LISTEN UP PHILIP has been woefully miscategorised as a comedy by the programmers of the London Film Festival - an opinion echoed by the director in an emailed statement read aloud at the start of the screening. At the time I had thought this to be a self-deprecating joke but an hour with not a single laugh out loud moment or even a wry inward smile I started to get the point. Rather, the prevailing mood of the film is one of melancholy and frustration and finally, sadly, boredom. But first, let’s step back a little.

The Philip of the title is an insufferably arrogant and self-involved author played by Jason Schwartzman as surely the most punchable character in this year’s film festival. The first act of the film sees Philip insult ex-girlfriends, old college friends and his publishers in a manner that infects the film with its meanness. I am not sure it ever entirely recovered. That is almost succeeds is down to the second act of the film, which sees Philip walk out on his long-suffering girlfriend Ashley when offered the chance of a country writing retreat by his mentor (Jonathan Pryce). The movie then takes a side street and focuses on Ashley’s grief and anger - a move that at least gives the film some heart and showcases the exceptional acting abilities of Elisabeth Moss. Unfortunately we then go back to the world of Philip and his equally narcissistic and exploitative mentor - and the subject of their callous behaviour switches to his daughter Melanie (Krysten Ritter.)

Now I realise that hating a character isn’t the same thing as hating a movie. And it’s not the movie’s fault that it has been miscategorised. But I was looking for it to succeed on its own terms - maybe in the way that THE SQUID AND THE WHALE did - a darkly comic but ultimately melancholic tale about a highly unlikeable and dysfunctional family. But Elisabeth Moss aside, there was nothing compelling about LISTEN UP PHILIP. Instead just the same snide comments - the lack of personal growth - and behind the lens the same sense of having seen all this before, and done better. Director Alex Ross Perry flits between channelling Wes Anderson and Woody Allen. We get the cute book covers photographed lined up on a table in close up and the knowing over-articulate, rushed voiceover narration that’s pure Alec Baldwin in THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. We also get the incidental jazz score, fondness for verbose literary types in tweed jackets and attempts at relationship insight from Woody Allen. The tragedy is that given the excellent cast and often perceptive insights, that the movie doesn’t add up to more, or certainly something more unique.

LISTEN UP PHILIP has a running time of 108 minutes.  The movie played Locarno where Alex Ross Perry won the Special Jury Prize. It also played Sundance and London 2014. It will be released in the USA on October 17th.

MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN - LFF14 - Day Three

Whatever happened to Jason Reitman?  He started off with these scabrous satires like THANK YOU FOR SMOKING - that were wicked and smart and hugely enjoyable.  But last year his movie LABOR DAY - a holy overdrawn melodrama starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin flopped onto the screen at the London Film Festival only to be trumped by this year's banal, trite and utterly superficial attempt at social comment: MEN WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

The film is meant to be an insightful and tragic depiction of the nefarious influence of IT on modern life but it has nothing new to say. Yes we know teenage girls find it easier than ever to fall into body dysmorphia in online chatrooms, and we know porn is easily and corrosively available, and we know that some people see reality TV as a means not only to be successful but as a validation of self.  This stuff was done with FAR more credibility and subtlety and artistic integrity in Sofia Coppola's BLING RING, for example. Or indeed, the second time I'm quoting this film in two days - Gus Van Sant's TO DIE FOR.  

All we have here is a very conventionally filmed portfolio movie in which a wide cast of characters struggle with their own isolation and anomie - something, by the way, that wasn't invented with Facebook or even Durkheim.  It's a waste of a stellar ensemble cast and god forgive Reitman for the pretentious Voyager satellite metaphor and the utter embarrassment of a narrative voiceover from Emma Thompson.

MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN has a running time of 116 minutes. The movie played Toronto and London 2014 and opens wide in the USA on October 17th. It opens in the UK on October 24th, in France on December 10th and in Germany on December 11th.