Review: Accidents Happen (2009)

Released April 22, 2010

The struggling family of Accidents Happen

Geena Davis’s career imploded after Cutthroat Island, the 1995 pirate movie that holds the dubious honour of being the biggest ever box-office flop. After an intermission involving Olympic archery and matters presidential (TV’s Commander in Chief), she returns to the big screen in this numbing British-Australian co-production about a family torn apart by unfortunate happenstance.

In tone and theme, it’s a less charming version of Pushing Daisies, the wonderful series that combined wacky Tim Burton-esque whimsy with morbid dark humour. There’s some of that here: “Some people wouldn’t know their ass from an air-conditioner,” our know-it-all narrator informs us as a man goes up in flames on a sunny morning in suburban Connecticut. Beautifully shot in poetic slow-motion, it’s the best scene in the film. This event is observed by the young Billy Conway (Harrison Gilbertson), the son of Davis’s Gloria, a boy struggling to find his place within his fractured family after a car accident kills his sister and places one brother into a coma.

He’s too bland a protagonist for us to really invest in his coping strategies – dabbling in girls, drugs and the odd nude streak through the local supermarket. Davis is however fine as the distraught mother, who spends most of the time on the verge of crying and muttering overly-scripted, inane wisecracks like “I’m so hungry I could eat a crowbar and shit a jungle jim.”

First-time feature director Andrew Lancaster shows a flair for painterly images but is saddled by a mess of a script by Brian Carbee that never settles on a consistent tone. Things turn all serious at the end when the story focuses on the real psychological cost of the family’s loss, and even though the ethereal indie-rock soundtrack encourages us otherwise, it’s hard to care when the catharsis isn’t earned.

Review: The Book of Eli (2010)

Released April 15, 2010

Denzel and Mila Kunis wandering the plains in The Book of Eli

Post apocalyptic movies are all the rage (The Road, Children of Men) and why not – there’s few concepts that are inherently dramatic and provide the platform for existential angst. There’s plenty of the latter in the latest movie from the Hughes Brothers (Menace II Society, From Hell), though the point of its confused religious grandstanding is anyone’s guess.

Eli, the man-with-no-name wandering though the generic but oddly beautiful American wasteland, is played by a stoic Denzel Washington. He’s a wizened old survivor who’s become adept at dispatching cannibalistic thugs with his workhorse blade slung over his shoulder. He needs it, especially, to ward off the aggressive Carnegie (Gary Oldman) who launders over a ramshackle town like Ian McShane’s Al Swearengen in Deadwood. Carnegie may delve into a Mussolini biography and have a paperback copy of the Da Vinci Code on his desk, but what he’s really after is the crucifix-adorned book in Eli’s possession. It doesn’t take a great leap of faith to guess the book’s subject and, as per the historical precedent, The Book of Eli follows the battle over this divine text, complete with wildly excessive, but gloriously stylish action scenes.

For two-thirds of its length Eli maintains this enjoyable B-movie Western vibe, replete with a classic high-noon style standoff. But it then turns to serious philosophizing and final act twists which are simply baffling. These WTF moments, weirdly, do not commit the M. Night sin of invalidating all that happened prior, but just act to make it more fascinating; The Book of Eli is nothing if not ambitious. The ideas are silly, but the oddball sincerity is kind of charming, and there’s a stylized exuberance to the images seemingly inspired by graphic novels.

Aside from Forgetting Sarah Marshall (and, presently, Date Night), the very pretty Mila Kunis often feels miscast. Here, her young Solara, a woman intrigued by Eli’s sturdy conviction, is an odd foil for the Washington’s grizzled survivor. A hoot, though, are Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour as a couple of cannibalistic outlanders.

Review: Beneath Hill 60 (2010)

Released April 15, 2010

Brendan Cowell's Captain Woodward somewhere under Hill 60

Spoilers for history: in 1917 members of the 1st Australian tunnelling Division detonated 19 mines under the German front lines in Belgium, resulting in the biggest ever man-made explosion. The blast, it is said, was heard as far away as Dublin. The lead up to this momentous event is the subject of this awfully old fashioned war movie set in the muddy misery of World War I. Don’t expect cries of “war is hell,” existential crises or sharp political comment, Beneath Hill 60 tells its story with a straight face and minimal reflection.

Our band of heroes, plucked from working in the mines back home, are lead by the soft-spoken Captain Oliver Woodward (Brendan Cowell). Tunnelling and explosive experts, they’re literally “diggers,” not soldiers. Before their reassignment to Hill 60, the movie skirts with tensions within the squad and between them and the more highly trained regular soldiers, but the underdeveloped characters are non-descript and expendable. As perfunctory is a relationship between Woodward and sixteen year-old farmgirl Marjorie Waddell (Bella Heathcote), told in flashback, which is low on romance but high in creepiness.

Despite impressive production values and cinematography (and a budget of only $9 million), director Jeremy Sims’ heavy theatre-trained hand is bludgeoning. Music swells, men fall in a slow motion swath of bullets and heroes make the necessary scarifies for the greater good. It’s undone, too, by some peculiar self-conscious acting from men who feel more like NIDA grads than working class miners. An exception is Steve Le Marquand’s as the gruff Fraser, a man who is not afraid to state his mind.

BH60, while delving into the procedures of war rather than its ideology, is no Hurt Locker. That film used specific details to illuminate Jeremy Renner’s adrenaline junkie protagonist. The characters in BH60, on the other hand, exist only at the service of the insufficiently explained plot. Not every war film needs to be a meditation on violence, but they do have to pass the most basic litmus test of any film: making the audience care, something Sims, despite his smooth and earnest production, struggles to achieve.

Review: Clash of the Titans (2010)

Released April 1, 2010

Sam Worthington as the demi-god Perseus

The original 1981 Clash of the Titans was a plodding fantasy epic made enjoyable by the special effects of stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen. The creator of innumerable beasts in the Sinbad movies and, most famously, the skeletons at the climax of Jason and the Argonauts, his designs were masterpieces of creativity and subtlety. These are qualities absent from Louis Leterrier’s frenetic remake, a wash of bland CGI monsters, ADD action and self-important dialogue.

Current bigshot Sam Worthington (still struggling with his pseudo-American accent) plays a non-descript, monosyllabic Perseus. The son of Zeus (Liam Neeson), he is none too pleased with his demi-god status after his adoptive parents are inadvertently killed by the malicious god of the underworld, Hades (Ralph Fiennes, in slithering Voldemort mode). As punishment for their rejection by man, the gods decree the city of Argos to be destroyed by the monstrous Kraken – inflated this time to Bruckheimer-sized proportions – unless the beautiful princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) is offered up as a sacrifice. It’s up to Perseus and his disposable band of warriors to avert disaster.

The plot makes little sense, especially since Perseus’ affection lies not with the in-peril Andromeda but towards the helpful demi-god Io (Gemma Arterton). Saving the princess, hence, seems like a plot convenience. Worse are the messy visuals. Already a victim of Leterrier’s poor spatial sense, the post-conversion to 3D is at best perfunctory and at worst, downright atrocious, simply too dim and muddled to be coherent.

Technical ineptitude aside, it’s the creature design and scene construction that reek of laziness and indifference. The suspenseful Medusa confrontation of the 1981 version is here replaced by an improbable battle in a cavern that’s a cross between the gravity-bending maze of Labyrinth and the fires of Mount Doom. It might have worked if, Mads Mikkelsen’s Draco aside, the characters were not already made of stone. I was cheering for Medusa, her demonic cackle one of the few moments of original inspiration.

There’s a joke early on about the absence of Bubo the mechanical owl, the R2D2 cash-in from the original. Bubo’s presence would have helped this movie. And that’s saying something.

Review: Kick-Ass (2010)

Released April 8, 2010

Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl prepare to pummel some baddies

Even with more than half a dozen superhero projects in development (including the all star The Avengers movies), it’s easy to feel the genre reached its artistic peak with The Dark Knight. Instead of following the formula to a tee, this adaptation of Mark Millar’s latest creation deconstructs it by making its characters comic book readers. In other words, it is to the superhero genre as Scream was for horror movies. It’s as much as success too, funny and surprisingly sweet yet featuring an 11-year old girl snarling the C-word and indulging in some cartoonish ultra-violence. Cue the uproar from family watchdogs. For the rest of us heathens, Kick-Ass is a thrilling piece of visceral cinema with a gleeful disregard for political correctness.

Traditional elements are shredded in a pop-culture blender resulting in characters who are familiar yet unique. Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is your average masturbatory teenager who would rather be anywhere but English class. A green wetsuit and myspace page later and he’s become Kick-Ass, amateur superhero and star of the most watched YouTube video on the web, a bloody and messy beating of local thugs. He’s Spiderman by way of McLovin. Mindy Macready/Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz) is the scene stealing purple-haired assassin, a mash of Natalie Portman from Leon and The Bride from Kill Bill. Her father is Big Daddy, whom a wacky Nicolas Cage defines indelibly as his own by way of Adam West’s Batman. McLovin himself (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) also appears as the son of supervillain Mark Strong, who should be getting good at it after Holmes, Stardust and Sunshine.

Director Michael Vaughan (Layer Cake) gives each action scene a distinct character – one brutal and circular, one in a continuous take and, in one of the film’s many nods to the iPod generation, one in video game-esque first person. He understands a mash of cuts doesn’t work without continuity, and that the best action advances character. Solidifying the endorphin rush is the deliberate choice of music, largely pillaged from composer John Murphy’s previous work (28 Days Later, Sunshine).

The buoyant thrills are matched by a genuine heart that lies less with Lizewski and friends’ Superbad antics than it does the unconventional Hit Girl/Big Daddy relationship, which optimistically purports how love can flourish even amongst the most peculiar of circumstances.

Review: How To Train Your Dragon (2010)

Released March 25, 2010

Hiccup and toothless give Jake and Neytiri a run for their money

Pixar has had a string of animated hits, critically and commercially, unrivalled since Disney’s heyday. DreamWorks animation was never going to challenge that dynasty but their latest is spritely and energetic, and revels in the 3D joy of simulated flight. That it doesn’t strive for the wit, invention and subtlety of Up or Wall-E is a mute point.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (Jay Baruchel) is an 11-year old Viking whose vernacular seems acquired from too many viewings of Juno. He lives on a coastal village under constant threat from the vicious, titular fire-breathing reptiles. Instead of raping and pillaging, it has been tradition amongst the clan of enormous bearded warriors, which include Hiccup’s father Stoick (Gerard Butler), to hunt these feared creatures. To do so is a rite of passage for every young Viking.

Hiccup is not so sure after downing the dreaded “Night Wing,” who, upon closer inspection, is less a feared predator than a cross between a crafty cat and a lizard. His budding friendship with “toothless” is at odds with his training as a dragonslayer, though his first hand knowledge gives him an edge over the impetuous tomboy – and romantic interest – Astrid (America Ferrera, Ugly Betty).

The story, which wears its young heart on its sleeve, goes where it must. Both adults and children will instead be focused more on the colourful 3D animation (famed cinematographer Roger Deakins is credited as visual consultant), clever humour and the magnificent, heroic score by John Powell; only the most jaded and cynical could not be roused by its energy and scope. An over reliance on action – however well constructed and animated – at the expense of character is the only dampener.

What lingers are the swoops and rolls of soaring flight as Hiccup and toothless skip over the waves and climb into the stratosphere. For those few moments, you’ll feel like you’ve come along for the ride.

Review: She's Out of My League (2010)

Released April 1, 2010

Molly, a perfect ten, and Kirk, a modest six in She's Out of My League

This is a slight, occasionally charming broad comedy that would feel more at home on the mouldy video store shelf than at the multiplex. There, it feels like a cheap copy of the Judd Apatow films (Knocked Up, The 40-Year Old Virgin); another valiant attempt to give hope to losers everywhere.

Stuck in dead end jobs, the 20-something male leads pass the time making crass jokes and rating people on a one to ten scale of sexual desirability. Kirk (Jay Baruchel), is a self-professed six, and works as a security guard at an airport. He and his three buddies, who are like the understudies of Jonah Hill, Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd, agree he has no chance with the gorgeous Hard Ten, Molly (Alice Eve). In a refreshing twist, it’s she, blond locks blowing in the breeze, who makes the first move. Family awkwardness, self-inflicted angst and sexual hijinks ensue.

League's concept is tired, but the jokes, when they’re not an American Pie level of crass, sometimes amuse, and nice-guy Kirk’s trepidation with his budding romance will be familiar to many. But his paltry self-esteem is more frustrating than endearing, especially since the traditional boy-meets-girl, boy-looses-girl structure hinges entirely on this character flaw.

Like Zack Galifianakis in The Hangover, it’s the chubby and lovable sidekick who is the funniest creation, in this case an overgrown child played by Nate Torrence. Krysten Ritter, who recently made a memorable appearance on TV’s Breaking Bad, also steals her scenes as Molly’s snappy best friend. They enliven but don't ignite this routine rom-com which, despite its second-tier charm, fails to achieve the elusive sweet-and-sour Apatow mix.

Review: Cop Out (2010)

Released March 18, 2010

A game Tracey Morgan and a bored Bruce Willis in Cop Out

Kevin Smith’s (Clerks, Chasing Amy) peculiar blend of witty dialogue-driven humour and sly observation is completely absent from this tired attempt to revive the buddy-cop genre. Those movies, epitomized by minor classics of the 80s such as 48 Hrs. and Beverly Hills Cop, worked both as action and as comedy. Cop Out works as neither, and can’t decide if it would rather be a homage or parody.

Take Tracey Morgan. Playing a variation of his manic 30 Rock character, in one scene he’s playing the good cop during an interrogation, endlessly quoting movies in an improvised sequence that could have been born as a Saturday Night Live skit. In another dramatic (TM) scene, he’s having a heart-to-heart with his wife (Rashida Jones), whom he suspects of cheating with their hot-and-single neighbour. This juxtaposition could have worked if either were (a) funny or (b) dramatic, but neither is the case.

Both Morgan and Bruce Willis, who sleepwalks through his role as the more sensible partner, are likeable stars at the whim of a mediocre script by Robb and Mark Cullen. Why Kevin Smith was inspired to make this his first directorial effort from material other than his own is baffling. He admitted that it was “not MY movie,” but “a movie I was hired to direct.” In which case, I would ask, why bother at all?

If it was a test of his directorial ability, then the pacing and sloppy handing of the few action scenes reveal areas for improvement. The plot, meanwhile, is based around the coincidence of Willis’ search for his missing baseball card – worth over $40k and to fund his daughter’s wedding – and a drug dealing ring.

Despite its problems, I didn’t want to flee from the theatre. Both Morgan, and Seann William Scott as a childish petty thief, have their moments, and the score by 80s-synth master Harold Faltermeyer is a snug fit. But Smith, at his best, is capable of greatness, whereas the best I can say of this soulless project is that it lives up to its title.

Review: Brothers (2009)

Released March 18, 2010

The bad brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) and good wife (Natalie Portman) in Brothers

This remake of the Susanne Bier’s critically acclaimed drama has little new to say about the effect of war on its participants. What it does have are three strong performances from big Hollywood stars and a smattering of raw, emotional truth.

Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) is a solider about to embark on another tour of Afghanistan, leaving behind his loving wife Grace (Natalie Portman) and their two daughters. Sam is the favoured and high-achieving son of the grouchy Hank (Sam Shepard), an alcoholic Vietnam-vet who would prefer to ignore the existence of his other trouble-making son, Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal).

Sam heads off to war but is quickly captured. His family presumes him dead –but of course, he’s not – and when he eventually returns, psychologically damaged from his ordeal, he resents the tight family unit that has formed in his absence.

The second half of Brothers is an emotional sucker punch, with a series of powerful yet oddly manufactured scenes. While tapping into a timely problem facing many military families, the characters feel more like movie creations than living, breathing entities. This is despite a nuanced performance from Portman, who is wonderful in an underwritten role; the frightening frenzy of Maguire’s paranoid veteran and, most real of them all, Gyllenhaal’s well-meaning but dysfunctional Tommy.

Brothers is not a war movie, but a family melodrama about guilt and acceptance. Its heightened emotions, minimal score and austere direction are a difficult mix. Director Jim Sheridan knows this, and cleverly uses the gentle humour of the family's delightful young girls to offset the tension. It's just enough, together with the performances, for Brothers to maintain its delicate balancing act, but it remains less than the sum of its quite substantial parts.

Review: Green Zone (2010)

Released March 11, 2010

Matt Damon on the prowl in Green Zone

They might as well have called it The Bourne Zone. Reuniting that franchise’s star and director (Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass), Green Zone is a tense thriller set against the still ongoing war in Iraq. While flirting with the war’s politics and the false justification for the U.S. lead invasion, it is first and foremost an action picture, shot in the director’s typically ragged, hand-held style. Haters of the Bourne sequels’ shaky-cam be warned.

The title refers to the international safe zone in central Baghdad that at one time was the home of the transitional government. Set around 2003, it is there we find U.S. soldier Roy Miller (Damon) on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. He begins to question his intel when his MET – Mobile Exploitation Team – fails to find any of the offending devices. Surprise, surprise. The military’s source, he learns, is only known by the name “Magellan”, and has leaked information to an embedded Wall Street Journal reporter, Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan). Local C.I.A. chief (Brendan Gleeson) also feels something is amiss. A machine gun rattle later and Miller finds himself an ally-deprived rogue on a quest for the truth. Sound familiar?

Say what you will about his frantic style, but Greengrass knows how to construct visceral action. His hard-hitting, quick cut realism is just as effective, in its own way, as The Hurt Locker’s slow-burning suspense. Closely resembling the standard man-out-of-his-depth-and-doesn’t-know-who-to-trust thriller, Green Zone fictionalises and condenses years of revelations and debate about the Iraq war into an easily digestible and highly-entertaining format.

Aside from its telling final shot, the film is not interested in judging the war’s legality, only that it is deplorable to deliberately deceive and manipulate. Miller stands in for those courageous individuals who are unwilling to simply accept dogma without question or justification. Early on a seemingly honest Iraqi citizen tells him there's a meeting of high ranking officials up the road. An ambush could be feasible. Despite the danger, Miller chooses to take him up on his suggestion, to which one of his subordinates responds: “Chief, we’re here to do a job, the reasons don’t matter”. “They matter to me,” he replies. I don't think he's alone with that sentiment.

Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)

Released March 4, 2010

George Clooney and a goat seeing who will blink first

Do you believe you could stop the heart of a goat with only the power of your mind? The men in The Men Who Stare at Goats think so, and, apparently, some real soldiers in the US military believed they could too.

Based on a sort-of-true story in Jon Ronson’s book on the same name, the film depicts the bizarre training of the First Earth Battalion, a New Age version of the military dreamed up in the 70's in reaction to the Vietnam war.

George Clooney stars as one of the original members of the movement, Lyn Cassady, who is currently on a mission in present day Iraq. He claims to have psychic powers and keeps in shape by bursting clouds with his mind. In flashback we see his training under hippie flower-loving leader Bill Django (Jeff Bridges). Most seem to accept the group’s airy Earth-loving philosophy, except for Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), who would rather use his powers to learn the ways of the dark side.

That’s not just a snappy pop-culture reference either as Cassiday likes to call himself a “Jedi Warrior”. He speaks knowingly about his bushido to an embedded reporter, played indifferently by an American-accented Ewan McGregor, who thinks he’s stumbled upon the story of a lifetime.

I know what you’re thinking: surely this can’t be a true story? Despite a Fargo-esque claim at the outset, the farce on screen certainly isn’t. More a series of offbeat gags than a coherent satire, it’s a case where the actors seem to have had more fun making it than an audience does watching it.

It’s tricky material, and director Grant Heslov, Clooney’s producing partner, never finds the right balance between flippancy and sincerity. Clooney, however, is entertaining playing a variation of his Coen-brothers dumb guy act, and Spacey gets all the best moments as the angry rebel.

Goats is an amusing diversion (with an appropriately loopy title) but enjoyment wears thin as it becomes clear that none of the characters are keen to wake from their deluded LSD-induced slumber.

Review: Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Released March 4, 2010

Alice (Mia Wasikowska) wandering in Wonderland

Tim Burton's version of Lewis Carroll’s classic is surprising for the wrong reasons. Updating it for today’s 3D craving audience, and with a story shoehorned into the hero’s journey archetype, the director that made the near-masterpiece Ed Wood or even the overblown but terrific Sweeney Todd seems curiously absent.

His usual elements are in play: Johnny Depp as the loopy Mad Hatter, the Danny Eflman score, the emphasis of visuals over story and his wife, Helena Bonham Carter, tearing it up as the manic Red Queen. But despite them and a wonderland that looks like Pandora on acid, it's too conventional, as if Burton was reporting to a committee, rather than the other way around.

Most startling is the screenplay by Linda Woolverton. Drawing more from Through The Looking Glass than its predecessor, the curious young protagonist has been refashioned into a post-pubescent young adult. In this guise her story becomes a simple coming-of-age tale about empowerment and responsibility.

Given this approach, a Jane Austen-lite framing story, in which Alice (Australian Mia Wasikowska, vash-ee-kov-ska) is the impending victim of an arranged marriage, works well enough. But as soon as she tumbles down the rabbit hole, she – and the audience – are thrown into a deliriously excessive 3D imagining of Wonderland.

The art direction and some of the effects are magnificent but, unlike Avatar, 3D was added after principal photography and it shows. The technology has not yet been refined, or at least implemented well, and Alice is an incomprehensible, haphazard mess.

Alice encounters all the usual suspects on her journey: the evaporative Cheshire cat, the wise Caterpillar, the waddling Tweedledee and Tweedledum and, ultimately, the nasty Jabberwocky. They are voiced by luminaries – and half the fun is guessing who is who – including Christopher Lee, Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman. Some of this is wackily amusing but the finale degenerates into a CGI battle that could have been pulled from any recent fantasy blockbuster.

The only unique element is Wasikowska as Alice who, behind her pale beauty and youth, belies an emotional strength otherwise absent from the film. Other than Carter’s scene stealing monarch, it’s only she that offers a lasting impression.

Review: From Paris With Love (2010)

Released February 18, 2010

The brainy trio of Travolta + Rhys Myers + random hooker

This movie is dumb. The bad guys are bad because they sell drugs or are from the Middle East. The good guys, if they are good, amount a body count to rival Roland Emmerich's in 2012. If only Pierre Morel's film was as entertaining or as sophisticated as that disaster epic.

At least, one might say, it has John Travolta. Here he's in screen chewing mode, swearing, flattening gangs with his fists and hookers with his...well, never mind. Essentially playing the same character as his baddie in The Taking of Pelham 123, Travolta is Charlie Wax, an American secret service agent roaming Paris with his new straight laced partner, James Reece (Jonathon Rhys Myers). What they are doing, who they are killing and why is as murky as the ugly, glum photography.

Plot is instead replaced by incomprehensible action. I can appreciate a brainless action thriller as much as the next person, but the sequences in From Paris with Love have no sense of space or tension. We see Travolta fire his gun. Cut. A baddie falls. Cut. Repeat. There's not even a Die Hard level of coherence let alone balletic Yuen Wo Ping choreography.

The pretty Kasia Smutniak plays Reece's Parisian wife who, thanks to the law of economy of characters and a lack of imagination by the screenwriters (Adi Hasak and the sometimes talented Luc Besson), quickly becomes more important that she appears.

It all leads to attempted suicide bombings and Travolta hanging out of a speeding car with a rocket launcher, and even that is, somehow, boring.

The only conceivable reason to watch this film is for Travolta’s lip-smacking murderous rouge. If you've seen Pelham 123, there is precisely none.

Review: Shutter Island (2010)

Released February 18, 2010

Digging for secrets on Shutter Island

It’s easy to be have a heightened critical eye when a director has the likes of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas in his filmography. And it’s true that Martin Scoresese’s latest, an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) best seller, is not quite of that standard. But Shutter Island is still an exhilarating movie, a dense psychological mind trip into the world of 1950s mental institutions.

Scorsese shoots it like gothic horror, like One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest drowned in Kafka and German Expressionism. This is so from our first view of the jagged island, as seen from the incoming boat ferrying U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo). They’re on their way to investigate a patient’s disappearance, but the two lead physicians, played by Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow, are unhelpful: either too calm and evasive (in the former case) or obviously malicious (in the latter). Soon a storm brews, patients run amok, Teddy starts having visions of the liberation of Dachau and his tragically dead wife (Michelle Williams), and general weirdness ensues.

While it wanders in the second act, the film is always fascinating as it tenuously borders the line between the real and the unreal, never making it obvious which is which. What is clear is that something is not quite right on the island. Are the CIA continuing Nazi eugenics experiments? And what are the doctors hiding?

DiCaprio is the standout in a fine cast; who’d have thought the heartthrob from Romeo + Juliet would have become Scorsese’s new De Niro? The real master, however, remains the man in the chair. Even when working within genre limitations, his startling compositions, whip pans and ambiguous handling of the material gives weight to a story that could have been trite and simplistic. Every element works here: the beautiful cinematography by Robert Richardson, the effective use of source music (there is no original score) and the perfectly judged performances from a cast playing tricky characters that are often more than they appear.

It's only a shame, at very least for DiCaprio, that it comes too late for the awards season.

Review: The Wolfman (2010)

Released February 11, 2010

Emily Blunt tending to the Wolfy Benicio Del Toro

The Universal Monster movies of the 30s and 40s were never really A-list productions. Often saddled with cheap production values and shoddy acting (Bela Lugosi might be the definitive Dracula but his performance is truly hilarious), they were at their best when most subversive – Bride of Frankenstein springs to mind. The Wolfman was always one of the second tier monsters, and this remake directed by journeyman Joe Johnston is very much in the same B-movie tradition.

This is not to say the production is weak. The cast is first rate, with Benicio Del Toro starring as Lawrence Talbot, an American man holed up in an estate in rural England with his father played by Anthony Hopkins. His brother, Ben, has disappeared, and townsfolk and wandering gypsies claim of a beast roaming the land causing havoc. Cue the arrival of Inspector Abberline (Hugo Weaving), fresh from investigating the Ripper murders and appearing like a deliberately spoken, bearded Agent Smith. Best of all is the wonderful Emily Blunt as Ben’s fiancée, totally compelling as the underwritten love interest.

The effects, a mix of traditional makeup and CGI, mostly convince. Showing more flair for visual design than one would expect from the director of Jurassic Park III, Johnston drenches the film in a lush gothic visual tapestry backed by Danny Elfman’s thunderously old fashioned score.

The story – and werewolf tales on screen are hardly rare – offers no surprises. What does is the level of gore. In this age of PG-13 blockbusters it’s refreshing than The Wolfman literally goes for the jugular. Entrails are spilled, organs devoured and heads roll. It’s all so schlocky that some of the more gratuitous moments elicit more laughs than scares, but that’s part of the appeal.

Whether or not multiplex audiences will go for a film so dreadfully old school, over wrought and melodramatic is another matter, but it succeeds as an affectionate slice of nostalgia for the original horror classics. Take it or leave it.

Review: Edge of Darkness (2010)

Released February 4, 2010

Angry Mel in Edge of Darkness

Having gained recent notoriety as a director and for drunken anti-Semitic rants, Mel Gibson is back in front of the camera in this effective revenge thriller. With the similarly themed Payback and Ransom already part of his filmography, Edge of Darkness hardly breaks new ground. Nor is its premise particularly unique: Liam Neeson’s recent Taken covered much of the same territory.

No matter, for Mel is still a likable presence even when playing a variation on his other hard-nosed vengeful fathers. At the outset he, Boston police officer Thomas Craven, witnesses the brutal murder of his daughter on his porch doorstep, with enough blood flowing that the scene is worthy of another well known Craven. Believing the buckshot was meant for him, he sets off on a grim-faced investigation of to find those responsible.

Mel thumps ex-boyfriends, lawyers and slimy senators on his way to discovering his daughter was a victim of a conspiracy related to her internship at the Northmoor nuclear facility.

Set against this backdrop of the rise and dangers of nuclear power, Edge of Darkness feels like it’s from another era. Which it is, it being an adaptation of a 1985 BBC miniseries also directed by Martin Campbell. Its strengths lie in the slow burn of paranoia worthy of an X-File, punctuated by raw and well judged moments of shock.

Best of all is Ray Winstone’s mysterious fixer and informant, who seems to operate outside the usual secret service channels. He visits Craven Deep Throat style, puffing on a cigar while seductively offering information. His cloudy allegiances make him more compelling than the obviously evil head of Northmoor (Danny Huston) and the nasties working surveillance.

Even though the third act rushes by too fast, up until that point the line between realism and hokum is nicely drawn. It’s eminently watchable and a solid return for a star who remains noteworthy both behind and in front of the camera.

Review: The Road (2009)

Released January 28, 2010

The desolation of The Road

Cormac McCarthy provided the source material for one of the best films of the decade in No Country for Old Men. Now his subsequent Pulitzer Prize winning novel has been adapted, a brutal portrayal of the remnants of mankind fighting for survival in a post apocalyptic wasteland. If you want a joyous, fun-filled time at the movies, look elsewhere.

A road movie in the purest sense of the term, we follow a father (a superb, restrained Viggo Mortensen) and son (young Australian Kodi Smit-McPhee) attempting to make their way to the sea in the hopes of warmer weather. Their most dangerous challenge, more so than the vicious cold or of finding food, are cannibals armed with more than just their peculiar appetite. The full extent of this disturbingly plausible savagery is only glimpsed, but still produces the required quota of queasiness.

The source of the holocaust is not explained, making the film contained and emphasizing the central dilemma: just how far is one willing to go to survive? This juxtaposition forms the centre of the relationship with between the father, determined to ensure his son’s survival no matter the cost, and the son, who clings closer to accepted, civilized morals.

The father's determination in part stems from the death of his wife (Charlize Theron), who chose her fate in preference to mere animalistic survival which she found distasteful. Don’t let the trailers fool you, though, her presence is fleeting and her story told in flashback.

I have not read the novel, but from the film one can easily get the feeling of McCarthy’s sparse punctuation-devoid prose and the overwhelming desolation of his world. Despite this, some characters, such as a dying old man played by an unrecognisable Robert Duvall, still retain their humanity amongst the horror.

And that, perhaps, is the film’s weakness. There are elements (I read) that have been softened from the novel (spit-roasted newborns, anyone?) and there are moments of promise that verge on sentimentality. It might be an odd claim for such a dark film, but one feels they almost didn’t go far enough.

Review: Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

Released January 28, 2010

A lot of platitudes are thrown around in F. Gary Gray's new thriller, most of them by the psychopathic serial killer Clyde Shelton played by Gerard Butler. He voices fears about a judicial system more concerned with legal wrangling than with honest justice. You might sympathize with him for a little while, but less so after witnessing his alternative: the dismemberment of an alive but paralyzed victim, Saw style, one limb at a time.

Mercifully this occurs off screen, but it's not the only bit of nasty in this trashy mix of Silence of the Lambs and Seven that is nonetheless disturbingly entertaining thanks to a healthy dose of ludicrousness.

In the opening scene, Clyde's wife and daughter are killed and prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) makes a deal with the killers to ensure a sentence ("It's not what you know, but what can be proven in court," he says). Clyde is furious and directs his vengeance at the killers and system that let them off lightly. The twist is that he is imprisoned when the latter murders take place. How is he committing these crimes? Does he have an accomplice? And if so, who?

The final answer is as absurd as some of the gleefully over the top killings, which in the latter stages shift from torture porn malice to cheesy action movie clichés. The big moments are broadcast too early, too, making the surprise less about when and who, and more about how.

Despite all of this, Law Abiding Citizen is suspenseful and decently made. Foxx and Butler make adequate adversaries, with the latter particularly having fun with the lip-smacking sociopathic traits of his character. It would be interesting to wonder what the film may have been like if the lead actors switched roles, as has been intended when the project began. Little different I wager, if the script was still written by the creator of Equilibrium and Ultraviolet, Kurt Wimmer.

It’s the source of most of the movie’s problems, but also some of its pleasures. Any movie that has a vicious unprovoked murder with a t-bone has to have something going for it.

Review: In the Loop (2009)

Released January 21, 2010

After the film was over I felt dirty. It was as if all those hours of idealizing the policy makers of The West Wing were in vain. Is this what politics is really like?

The characters of In the Loop, a scathing political comedy, are either selfishly manipulative or clueless. In the former category are Brit spin doctor Malcolm Tucker (played with profane relish by Peter Capaldi) and American warmonger Linton Barwick (David Rasche). In the latter is the bumbling British MP Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), who mumbles suggestive platitudes about a possible war in the Middle East. "To walk the road of peace," he says, "sometimes we need to be ready to climb...the mountain...of conflict." This understandably ruffles Whitehall’s feathers, and soon he finds himself a pawn in a trans-Atlantic game to justify a war. Iraq is never named, but the allegory is plain.

Anna Chlumsky (My Girl, all grown up) shows admirable comedic chops as an assistant in Washington who is wooed by Foster’s aide Toby (Chris Addison). And a deadpan Gina McKee plays the British Director of Communications, one of the few characters with a modicum of sense, and hence is always hilariously on the receiving end of Tucker’s venom.

Director Armando Iaannucci has adapted his BBC series The Thick of It, drawn upon the zaniness of Dr. Strangelove and blended it with the pseudo-documentary style of The Office to craft one of the most entertaining and timely political satires in years.

It’s also utterly hysterical, with dozens of throwaway one liners that also offer sly observation. Hollander is a lovable fumbling klutz and a good foil for Capaldi. When asked his opinion in a Washington committee meeting all he can muster is that it is “difficult, difficult, lemon, difficult." You have to at least admire his honesty.

Born from the Bush era of politics, In the Loop is an apt reminder of how easy it is for those in power to misuse it for their own selfish ends. All those hours of The West Wing may not have been in vain, but even the most idealistic need a reality check once in a while.

Review: Up in the Air (2009)

Released January 7, 2010

No film has better captured the confusion and alienation of the post Bush-era recession than Jason Reitman’s latest, a sly and poignant study of a man who goes everywhere and nowhere.

He is Ryan Bingham (George Clooney). You know the type. Smart suit, smooth talking, efficient but empty. He lives in an airport lounge, travelling across the country firing people for a living. Sometimes he gives motivational speeches, extolling the virtues of living an attachment free life. If the sum of your relationships and possessions were a backpack, he says, his would be empty. And he wants yours to be too.

But his boss (Jason Bateman) is about to take him off the road. He is to be replaced by a more efficient iPhone-generation firing system suggested by the ambitious but inexperienced Natalie (a wonderfully zestful Anna Kendrick). In a last ditch effort to maintain his lifestyle, Ryan takes Natalie on the road to show her what firing people is really like.

Bingham ends up learning as much from her as she does from him, though his real muse is the seductive Alex (Vera Farmiga, The Departed). With her he finds a kindred spirit, and for the first time considers whether there are things more important than his dream of obtaining 10 million frequent flyer miles.

The story could have easily slipped into romantic comedy clichés (and, despite its often profound subject matter, it is very funny), but Reitman, who also co-wrote the screenplay from Walter Kim’s novel, is too clever for that. Underneath the witty banter and screwball comedy sensibility, there’s a humbling and sad realization about life in the technological age. The reality is amplified by scenes involving real people describing their anguish, fear, and uncertainty following the widespread layoff of staff.

Clooney has never been better, still the smooth charmer he’s always been, and Farmiga and Kendrick are his match. Jason Reitman has already made the excellent Thankyou for Smoking and Juno. With Up in the Air he’s topped them both. A.O. Scott called it “a classic in the making”. He’s not wrong.