Film

Anomalisa

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13/03/16

Writer/director Charlie Kaufman has been responsible for some of the most original and intriguing films of recent years – Inside John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synechdoche New York, to name but three. When I tell you that Anomalisa is created using stop frame animation, you may have preconceptions of what it’s going to be like, but I’d advise you to go along with an open mind, because in my humble opinion, there’s never been another film quite like this one. To begin with, the animation techniques employed here are extraordinary, pushing the medium to its very limits. Sometimes, particularly in close up, it’s hard to believe that you’re not actually watching real actors. And there’s something about seeing such human tragedy enacted by puppets that somehow serves to amplify the reality of the situation.

Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) is going through a long dark night of the soul. He feels alienated from his wife and young son and stumbles through a world where everyone seems to have the same face. This is doubly unfortunate, because he’s a motivational speaker and the author of a critically acclaimed self-help book aimed at business people, intended to teach them how to deal more effectively with their customers. Michael embarks on a trip to Cincinnati where he is to deliver a keynote speech and his journey unfolds in more-or-less real time, capturing the alienating experience perfectly – the meaningless chatter of a taxi driver, the disturbingly beatific gaze of a hotel receptionist, the disconcerting anonymity of a hotel room. Michael contacts an old flame, who he hasn’t seen for years, in the hope that he’ll rekindle some passion with her, but it ends badly. She clearly still harbours a grudge. Shortly afterwards, he chances upon Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh) an avid fan who has come all the way from Akron, Ohio to catch his speech. Sensing an opportunity, Michael embarks on a clumsy seduction…

There are only three voice artists at work here – Tom Noonan handles all the other roles, male and female, a move which at first seems like an affectation, but as the story moves increasingly  into a Kafkaesque meditation on identity and the bleak condition of human interaction, it all begins to make a lot more sense. A fumbling and protracted sex scene between Michael and Lisa may perversely be the most realistic coupling ever committed to the big screen, and the bleak tragedy of the film’s conclusion is particularly resonant. I sat there mesmerised throughout.

Mind you, it’s not to everyone’s taste. A woman in the row behind us loudly proclaimed that it was ‘the worst movie she’d ever seen.’ Well, she’s entitled to her opinion, of course, but I have to disagree most vehemently. Anomalisa (co-directed with Duke Johnson) may just be Kaufman’s masterpiece and much as I liked Inside Out, I can’t help feeling that this was a more worthy contender for that animation Oscar. Go see what you think, but whatever you feel about the merits of Kaufman’s work, I think you’ll have to agree that this is a film like no other.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Hail Caesar

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05/03/16

Ah, the Coen Brothers! The directorial duo who dollar-for-dollar have given me more great cinematic viewing that just about anyone else currently working in Hollywood. When they are fully on the button – Fargo, Blood Simple, True Grit, they are pretty much unbeatable; and even their rare misfires – The Ladykillers, Intolerable Cruelty, have more wit and invention about them than most of the competition.

If Hail Caesar isn’t quite up there with their very finest work, it nevertheless comes pretty damned close. Set in 1951 when the movie industry was bracing itself for the impact of the burgeoning medium of television, this film is an affectionate look at the tail end of the ‘dream factory,’ complete with whip smart parodies of the kind of cheesy entertainment that was popular at that time.

Josh Brolin stars as Eddie Mannix, a Hollywood ‘fixer.’ His chief concern at the moment is the titular biblical epic, starring Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) as a Roman centurion who encounters the true Christ and is transformed by the event. A bit further down the priority list, Mannix is charged with the task of finding a husband for DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johannsson) an Esther Williams-style bathing beauty-cum-movie star who has inconveniently got herself pregnant and is now failing to fit into her mermaid’s tail. Meanwhile, amiable cowboy-star, Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) is struggling with an unsuitable role in an upper class romance directed by Laurence Lorentz (Ralph Fiennes) – (the line ‘Would that it t’were so simple’ is something that’s going to stay with you long after the credits have rolled) and to cap everything, all-singing, all-dancing Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) is actually… well, that would be telling.

Matters come to a head when Whitlock is kidnapped and held to ransom for reasons that are much more complicated than you might reasonably expect. As is so often the case, the Coens have gleefully cast Clooney as another in a long line of handsome dullards, a role he delivers with conviction, but much of the pleasure here is derived from spotting big stars in cameo roles, giving their all in scenes from imaginary period movies. You’ll smile, mostly because though there’s evidently a touch of lampoonery in the telling, it’s so artfully done, the parodies could almost pass muster as the real McCoy.

Hail Caesar is a constant delight and perhaps more significantly, here is a film that simply could not have come from any other American film-makers. The Cohens, having spent some time now on much more serious scripts, are cutting loose and having a bit of fun. The result is a hoot.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

Janis: Little Girl Blue

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31/02/16

Decades before Amy Winehouse travelled a similarly doomed trajectory, there was Janis Joplin. Like Winehouse, she showed a precocious talent in her teens and also like Winehouse, she achieved success quite suddenly, after an incendiary performance at the Monterey pop festival in 1967 kicked her career into the stratosphere; and almost inevitably, she succumbed to the allure of hard drugs and died of an overdose just as her career seemed to be getting back on track after a temporary lull.

As a youngster, I adored Joplin. Something about the layers of pain that bled through that extraordinary voice entranced me. I had the Cheap Thrills album which she recorded with Big Brother and the Holding Company and I played it a lot, back in the day, the volume cranked up to the max. It’s undeniable that Joplin was one of the first white women to make her mark in the male-dominated world of rock ‘n’ roll but more than that, hers was a career that was based almost entirely on the evocation of sorrow and loneliness. Janis: Little Girl Blue is a powerful biopic that looks back at her career from its first stirrings to its tragic conclusion and despite the inherent sadness, there’s much here to relish: her extraordinary performance of Ball and Chain at Monterey, her super-charged appearance at Woodstock and, perhaps most presciently, her toe-curling press conference at her ten-year high school reunion, where she returned to her home town to flaunt her fame in the faces of the people who had voted her ‘ugliest man in college,’ only to look about as comfortable as a goldfish on a hot grill.

Of course, you don’t really have to be a Joplin fan to enjoy this film, but it certainly helps. For many, her voice is a grating screech that they’ll simply never warm to. For me, it’s one of the greatest voices in rock history. It’s interesting to note that towards the end of her career, she was learning to control that voice, to experiment with the many different facets it contained and this film leaves you with the conviction that there were great things to come. But fame is always most impressive when it burns fierce and hot and is prematurely extinguished by mortality. In a way, Joplin set a tragic example that would be followed by countless others over the decades.

As biopics of musicians go, this is a good one. But be warned, if you’re a big softie like me, it might be advisable to take a pack of tissues. You’ll need them.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

 

The Finest Hours

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21/02/16

A rare Disney vehicle that doesn’t involve animation or slapstick humour, The Finest Hours (forgettable title) is based on a true story and depicts a daring rescue mission carried out in the heart of a terrible storm off Cape Cod in 1952. In terrifying conditions, a huge oil tanker is not so much battered by the storm as actually ripped in two, drowning its captain and most of the crew, but leaving the rear section still afloat with thirty two men on board. It’s down to quietly spoken engine-room man, Ray Sybert (Casey Afflick) to take control of the situation and devise a way of keeping what’s left of the tanker above the waterline until help gets there – but in the days before GPS location existed, how is anybody ever going to find them?

Help eventually comes in the shape of handsome coastguard officer, Bernie Weber (the angel-faced Chris Pine)  who has recently become engaged to the feisty Miriam (Holliday Grainger). Having failed to save some local seamen in a recent maritime tragedy, Weber has something to prove, so despite being warned by all and sundry that he’s embarking on a suicide mission, he selects three plucky crewmen and sets off into the heart of the storm, trusting on good luck and previous experience to guide him.This would seem unlikely if it didn’t hap[pen to be true.

The Finest Hours is a handsomely mounted film, that has much to recommend it. The period detail is convincingly evoked, there are nice performances from the ensemble cast and the storm at sea sequences are suitably immersive, occasionally downright thrilling. If in the end it’s all a bit reminiscent of The Perfect Storm, it matters not one jot, because if the aims of this film were to entertain and enthral then it achieves them with ease. In what’s becoming an increasingly popular trope, the end credits show images of the real life heroes alongside their screen counterparts, allowing us to see just how faithful the filmmakers have been to their source material.

A word of warning though. Anyone planning a cruise in the near future may want to give this one a miss.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

Bone Tomahawk

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20/02/16

Some films acquire a cult status almost by accident. Others, come galloping over the horizon, waving flags and blowing trumpets to announce that this is their greatest ambition. Much of the advance talk about Bone Tomahawk suggests that this is surely the latter kind of beast. And what a curious beast it is, an 18 certificate mash-up of John Ford’s The Searchers and Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust. Let me warn those of a nervous disposition that this is an extremely visceral movie with unflinching scenes of bodily carnage.

Of course, like many other films these days, it hasn’t made it to the multiplexes, but interested parties will find it at the independent cinemas – we caught it at Home, Manchester. Set in the Wild West at an unspecified time, it tells the story of the abduction of a white woman by ‘troglodytes.’ Yes, you read that right. Writer/director S. Craig Zahler clearly thinks he’s neatly sidestepped the issue of showing native Americans in a bad light by making his baddies inbred mutants, who no local tribe wants to claim as their own. The trouble is, he’s not really fooling anyone with this approach. Presenting his villains in this dehumanised way is actually a bit of a cop-out, a way to avoid dealing with the very important issues of identity and representation.

The abducted woman is local medic Samantha (Lili Simmons) whose husband Arthur (Patrick Wilson) is currently laid up with a badly injured leg. He insists on going after his wife along with grizzled Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell) his likeable old deputy, Chicory (Richard Jenkins) and a local dandy, Brooder (Matthew Fox, finally finding a decent post-Lost role). The four men set out on their quest and the film’s most telling moments are concerned with the interplay between them. But as they draw nearer to the hidden valley where the troglodytes dwell, things take a particularly nasty turn…

Bone Tomahawk is by no means perfect – there are some clunky moments in there and I thought the ending was decidedly unimpressive. What’s more, Samantha seems to survive her terrible ordeal without smudging her makeup. But despite its shortcomings, I rather enjoyed the journey. Clearly shot at a fraction of the budget of a big Hollywood movie, the sheer weirdness of the film does tend to exert a hold on the viewer, even if some of the violence is of the ‘look away quickly’ variety. I can honestly say I’ve never seen another Western quite like it – and for that alone, it’s worth seeking out.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Brooklyn

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17/02/15

‘Missed this film at the multiplex but caught it at an Indie.’ This is something I seem to be saying with increasing regularity, these days. Take Brooklyn, for instance, critically acclaimed and Oscar-nominated, yet it just about managed to scrape a week at Cineworld, to be replaced no doubt, by Dirty Grandpa or something equally vacuous. We caught it at the Heaton Moor Savoy – and while I’m on the subject, how gratifying it was to see this recently refurbished cinema completely sold out at 3.30 pm on a wet Wednesday afternoon, proving that there certainly is a big audience for this film, provided it’s advertised correctly.

Brooklyn is an unashamedly old-fashioned movie, based on the book by Colm Toibin and adapted for the screen by Nick Hornby. In 1950s Wexford, Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) is failing to flourish. She has no job and (even more shameful in that era) no prospect of marriage, so when New York-based Father Flood (Jim Broadbent) arranges for her to emigrate to New York, she jumps at the chance, leaving her older sister, Rose to look after their widowed mother. Once in Brooklyn, Eilis finds a job in a swish department store and a home in a boarding house on Clinton Street run by Mrs Keogh (a delightful cameo by Julie Walters). But it isn’t long before romance arrives in the shape of Italian-American, Tony (Emory Cohen). As is usual in such stories, the path of true love seldom runs smooth and when Rose dies suddenly, Eilis has to head home for the funeral – and once back in her mother’s vicelike grip, life becomes increasingly complicated…

This is a pleasurable, warm bath of a film – there are no great surprises here, but the 50s setting is beautifully evoked, the performances are uniformly good (particularly from Ronan, who fully deserves her Oscar nod) and the story is strong enough to hook you to the end. There’s enough resonance in what happens here to strike chords with most older viewers and in the end, this is perhaps the film’s greatest strength – an everyday tale of an everyday Irish girl cast adrift in an unfamiliar location.

Charming.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

 

 

Trumbo

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16/02/16

Despite a couple of well-deserved Oscar nominations, Trumbo didn’t trouble the multiplexes for very long at all – perhaps it was a tad too political to draw in the crowds, even with Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston in the lead role, but you can still catch it on the big screen at independent cinemas (it’s showing at Home, Manchester until the 23rd Feb.) It’s essentially a biopic of screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo and if the name doesn’t mean an awful lot to you, certainly some of the movies he wrote will – Roman Holiday, anyone? Spartacus? Exodus? 

The film begins in the late 1940s, when Trumbo is one of the most respected and successful screenwriters in the Hollywood cannon. He is also, like many of his friends,  a member of the Communist Party. As the ‘House of Un-American Activities Committee comes into being, such people are increasingly regarded with hostility and suspicion. They are seen by many as the ‘communist threat,’ secretly planning to overthrow the USA. Such suspicions are further fuelled by the scurrilous (and openly racist) rants of Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hoppa (played here with venomous relish by Helen Mirren.) Trumbo is the man with the guts to stand up to the committee and for his pains is imprisoned for several years, even though he hasn’t actually broken any laws. On his release, his career in tatters, he’s  obliged to ghostwrite cheap movies for the unscrupulous producer Frank King (John Goodman) for a fraction of his former salary. He goes on to create similar opportunities for his other friends who have been similarly shafted, in each case ascribing authorship to a non-existent screenwriter. But when one of his films, The Brave One, is nominated for an Oscar, it’s clear that something has to change…

Biopics are tricky creatures, but Director Hal Roach does a good job with this one, aided no end by a scorching performance by Cranston  – his chain-smoking, wisecracking personification of the great man never fails to entertain, even as it informs. Roach has also made a decent fist of casting actors to play movie icons – Michael Stuhlbarg is terrific as Edward G. Robinson and Dean O Gorman’s turn as the young Kirk Douglas is extraordinary – just check out the sequences from Spartacus where he interacts on screen with Woody Strode – you literally cannot see the joins.

More importantly, perhaps, Trumbo takes a cold hard look at one of the most shameful eras in American history – and with the irresistible rise of Donald Trump to provide contemporary resonance, its message has never been more timely. Do take the opportunity to see this film, it’s really is worth the effort.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Deadpool

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13/02/16

The trouble with Deadpool is, it wants to have its cake and eat it. ‘Look at me!’ it shouts, ‘I’m a superhero movie but I’m different to the rest!’ And maybe there’s a certain amount of truth in that statement, but when the ‘difference’ is a 15 certificate rather than the usual 12A and a series of knob gags directed straight to camera, well, that’s really not enough to justify our time in the cinema. I’ve had a sneaking admiration for Ryan Reynolds since the brilliant low budget indie, Buried, and he’s been the prime mover in getting this ultra-violent, potty-mouthed franchise onto the big screen, but really, I expected a bit more than this.

Reynolds plays former Special Forces Op, Wade Wilson, now reduced to beating up hoods to earn beer money. His world changes when he meets Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) and a love affair ensues, but it’s cut horribly short when Wade discovers he’s in the late stages of inoperable cancer. When he’s offered the chance of salvation, the opportunity to be turned into a ‘superhero’ he reluctantly goes along with it. But the process is a slow and painful one, administered by the psychopathic Ajax (Ed Skrein) and once transformed (and hideously scarred into the process) ‘Deadpool’ swears revenge on the man who has turned him into a superman.

I don’t want to be completely negative about the film. I enjoyed the opening slo-mo credits sequence, (if the rest of it had been as classy, this would be a kinder review) and just occasionally a few of the wisecracks actually made me smirk. But the 15 rating allows for quite horrible levels of carnage and when two characters from the X-Men franchise wander in trying to enlist Deadpool to their team, it starts to feel as formulaic as any of the other spandex-clad offerings out there. Fight sequences (and there are a lot of them) seem to go on for ages and watching indestructible people being repeatedly punched in  the head really isn’t my idea of fun. For all it’s much-vaunted ‘originality,’ the film ultimately comes down to a man rescuing his girlfriend from the bad guys, a trope we’ve seen a gazillion times before.

I’d be the first to admit that this probably wasn’t aimed at the likes of me. Advance word is that Deadpool has wracked up impressive viewing figures in the USA and a sequel is inevitable. I for one, won’t be in any hurry to repeat the experience. This is a big, loud, slick slice of mayhem, with occasional signs that suggest it could have been so much more than that.

2.5 stars

Philip Caveney

Goosebumps

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07/02/16

This movie, based around the books of the prolific teen author, R.L. Stine, has been in the works for a very long time. Originally slated as a vehicle for Tim Burton, back in 1998, it has bumped around in limbo since then but finally gets a cinematic outing courtesy of director Rob Letterman. The wait has been worth it, because this is an unqualified delight that takes just enough time to set out its stall, before plunging us headlong into a gallumphing chase that rarely loses momentum.

After the recent death of his father, Zach (Dylan Minette) moves from New York to Madison, Delaware with his mother, Gale (Amy Ryan) the newly appointed vice-principal at the local high school. Zach soon notices the attractive girl next door, Hannah (Odeya Rush) but is quickly herded off by her seemingly stern father, played by Jack Black. But appearances can be deceptive. It turns out that Hannah’s dad is the reclusive author, R.L. Stine and that his house is a repository for his original manuscripts, each of which has to be kept locked in order to prevent the creatures captured on its pages from coming to life. Zach manages to accidentally release the monster from Stine’s The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena and from that point, everything goes haywire… pretty soon, Madison is overrun with ravenous werewolves, shambling zombies and homicidal garden gnomes.

It’s an adorable premise and it’s expertly orchestrated; scenes where ink literally bleeds from the pages of the manuscripts to create the monsters of Stine’s imagination are particularly impressive. Malevolent ventriloquist’s doll, Slappy (from Night of the Living Dummy – also voiced by Black) is cleverly portrayed as Stine’s altar ego. The witty screenplay by Darren Lemke shows a clear understanding of the way a writer’s mind works – I loved the scene where Stine, obliged to write another story that is the only hope of salvaging a desperate situation, keeps dithering over the first line of the story. Goosebumps may not be profound or meaningful, but it’s hard to bring off this kind of fantasy storytelling successfully and here’s one of those rare attempts that succeeds on nearly every level. The CGI creatures are nicely done and a climactic scene with most of the cast barricaded into the school gymnasium brings everything to a suitable conclusion. There’s also a late plot twist concerning Hannah that I didn’t see coming.

If you’re already familiar with Stine’s work, it’ll be an added bonus, because most of his creatures are featured here, but it clearly doesn’t matter too much. I somehow managed to miss the books completely, but I liked the film a lot and would recommend it to anyone looking for a bit of harmless escapist fun. Enjoy!

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

The Big Short

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31/01/15

Another day, another Oscar nominated film. The Big Short appears to be a lot of people’s favourite to lift the best movie gong this year and it’s certainly accomplished. It takes a long hard look at one of the most shameful periods of recent American history – the years leading up to the American housing crisis and the subsequent crash of Wall Street’s biggest banks. More specifically, it homes in those individuals who saw the crash coming and made millions by betting that it would happen.

The first person to spot the looming bubble is Michael Burry (Christian Bale) an autistic Capital Hedge Fund Manager, who invests heavily on what he believes is a certainty. Others soon follow suit, including Mark Baum (Steve Carell) whose own self-loathing makes it difficult for him to exploit the opportunity, but he does it anyway, mostly at the behest of wheeler-dealer Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling). There’s even a couple of enterprising kids who want to have a punt and who call on ex-trader Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) to get them into the game. The witty script does a great job of explaining complicated (and it must be said, quite boring) financial manoeuvres in a way that everyone can understand and I liked the way that characters often break off in mid conversation, in order to talk directly to the camera. But if there’s a major problem with the film, it’s this – it’s very hard to root for characters who are self-serving assholes looking to make their fortunes from the misfortunes of ordinary people. OK, I appreciate these are the nearest to ‘good guys’ we’ll find in this story, but they only seem reasonable because the bankers they’re up against are so utterly and irredeemably despicable. And if that concept rankles, then this may not be the film for you.

When the crash eventually comes, the fallout is terrible, but even worse is the fact that the guilty parties don’t go to gaol, as they clearly should, but instead pay themselves massive bonuses and then look for other ways to exploit their customers. The Big Short is doubtless an important film and one that hits its intended targets with ease, but it’s also a hard film to like. For the big prize, I’d love to see Mad Max: Fury Road (unlikely) or The Revenant take the best movie gong. Could The Big Short be the one to win it? Get your bets in now, before the odds begin to shorten.

4 stars

Philip Caveney