Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

If you'd have told me only a couple of years ago that in 2009 I would be leaving a Guy Ritchie film having thoroughly enjoyed myself I would have had a hard time keeping a straight face. And yet Sherlock Holmes just worked, through a combination of dumb-but-fun plotting, Mark Strong doing his best Hammer Horror villain impression and the undeniable chemistry between Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. The film was a hit, and two years later we have the inevitable sequel. Strong is out, replaced by Jared Harris as Holmes' nemesis Professor Moriarty, who has an Evil Plan™ that manages to be both fiendishly convoluted and blindingly obvious at the same time; an impressive feat. It had something to do with starting a major world war so that he could profit from the arms trade (Wasn't that also his nefarious plan in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? The crafty bugger).

What follows is a thorough, two hour box ticking of the check list of globe-trotting action adventures: Assassins on a train? Check. A night at the opera? Check. Frenchman named Claude who exists purely for reasons of exposition? Check. Ludicrous and totally impractical mountaintop fortress lifted straight out of a Bond film? Check. But just as with it's predecessor, this is a film in which everyone involved seems have realised just how silly it all is, and decided to run with it anyway. Jared Harris makes a fantastic Blofeld to Mark Strong's Dracula, his scenes with Downey Jr. sparking the kind of chemistry that made the first film so enjoyable. Noomi Rapace too proves that she can successfully make the leap to English language films, it's just a shame that she's given something of a non-role. There's also a brilliantly enjoyable and revealing (in more than one sense of the word) cameo from Stephen Fry as Holmes' older brother Mycroft.

That's not to say that the film isn't without it's flaws. There's an overly long detour to Germany that's made even more grating by it's excessive use of slow motion. This was the moment at which I thought my old dislike of Ritchie's flashy, vacuous earlier films would rear it's head, the camera slowing to a crawl every time a character leaped through the air, loaded a gun or blew their nose. Fortunately it's not a lasting problem, and he does redeem himself slightly by using a surprisingly clever gag to turn Holmes and Moriarty's fist fight into mental one. But despite all these flaws and strengths, the reason that it all hangs together is still the relationship between Holmes and Watson, and the film works best when they are bickering and behaving like old women. In their dysfunctional relationship there is some surprisingly good comedy, and in the case of Watson's framing narration, something approaching genuine drama. It's not big and it's certainly not clever, but just as with the first film, it is extremely entertaining.

Hugo (2011)

Martin Scorsese must have a lot to live up to. He is revered by critics, by his peers and by audiences, and you would be hard pressed to find any respectable 'Greatest Movies Ever' list that did not include at least one of his films. And so it comes as a surprise that not only has he made a family film, but that it seems to be the film that is closest to his own heart. Scorsese is a cinephile, and Hugo is a cinephile's delight. It's a heartfelt love letter to the mechanics and history of cinema, but one that works equally well as a family adventure film. Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is a young boy who lives in the walls of a Paris train station, where he has maintained the clocks and tried to repair an old automaton ever since his father died. After angering the elderly owner of a toy stall in the station (Ben Kingsley), Hugo and the stall owner's goddaughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) slowly discover that this morose old man is none other than Georges Melies, the great cinematic pioneer. Together they decide to unlock the secret of his past and his connection to Hugo's automaton.

The film is visually stunning, with an almost herculean amount of effort put into the tiniest of details (look out for 'cameos' from Django Reinhardt, Salvador Dali and James Joyce in the station), but it's technical prowess never overshadows it's human elements. Asa Butterfield is disarmingly good as the titular Hugo, considering his young age, but it's Kingsley who really shines. He plays Melies with the tragic grandeur of a toppled ruler; a sad, crippled husk of a man unable to keep up with the changing world around him. It couldn't be further from the unashamedly creepy performance he gave in Shutter Island, Scorsese's last film. Also worthy of note is the pleasure in seeing Christopher Lee in a charmingly nice role as a kindly bookshop owner. Even Sacha Baron Cohen's antagonistic station inspector manages to be more than a two dimensional caricature; the metal leg brace that could have been merely a villainous gimmick becoming a delicate reminder of very real weakness and vulnerability.

It is of course impossible to discuss the film without mentioning it's use of 3D.  Several critics have put forward the most compelling theory as to why the 3D works in this case; that in a film about the mechanics of cinema, the 3D is drawing attention to itself as an alienation device. I have always found that 3D simply looks like lots of 2D images stacked on top of each other, but whereas this reduces the effect of most films, in Hugo it actually gave the film the look of an old Melies film. The film is so brilliantly made that it will work perfectly well in 2D, but even I have to begrudgingly admit that Scorsese has done a pretty good job with the third dimension. Hugo is the type of film that reminds you why you fell in love with cinema in the first place. It's a beautifully crafted valentine to cinema itself, and it's pure self indulgence on Scorsese's part, but his evident delight and wonder is infectious.

Take Shelter (2011)

There is a moment in Take Shelter when the main character's wife finally snaps, screaming at him “Are you out of your mind!?”. It's a question the audience has been asking ever since they sat down. Curtis (Michael Shannon) is an an average, salt of the earth American, with an an average, blue collar job, an average home in an average white picket fence American town, and an average loving wife and an average young daughter. In fact the only decidedly unaverage thing about Curtis are his dreams of an impending storm of apocalyptic proportions. Night after night he is plagued by the belief that something catastrophic is coming, and that he must prepare to protect his family. He begins to obsessively stock pile food and renovate the storm shelter behind his house, using all his family's savings, while his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) becomes ever more concerned that he is succumbing to the paranoid schizophrenia that saw his mother institutionalised when he was just a boy.

At the heart of Take Shelter is the constant question of Curtis' sanity, and it's one to which director Jeff Nichols seems unwilling to give a straight answer. Despite everything we are told about his family's history of mental illness, and his own acceptance that he may be going insane, the entire film is saturated with an overwhelming sense of foreboding. Even in it's most quiet moments there is the sense that something cataclysmic is never far around the corner. In Curtis' obsessive paranoia there are echoes of Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, not least when his cosy family life begins to come apart at the seams. There are also the tiniest glimmers of a post 9/11 political subtext, with Curtis' growing paranoia over the nameless, faceless something coming to small town America, but this is so subtle it's barely there and the film works perfectly well without it.

Jessica Chastain gives a brilliantly restrained performance as his concerned wife, and in any other movie she would be the clear highlight; but this is Shannon's show. His performance veers wildly from understated intensity to out and out mania and it's a testament to his ability as an actor that he manages to bridge the gap so seamlessly. Curtis is a perfect example of the kind of roles that Shannon is now know for: a man circling the very edges of insanity, occasionally dipping his feet in before recoiling in horror, never demonstrated better than the scene in which he wildly berates his work colleagues for their lack of concern over his warnings, to the horror of his wife and confusion of his daughter. It's a heartbreaking moment, as any pretence of normality within his life comes crashing down, and he must endure the half scared, half pitying looks of his friends. The film's great triumph is in the emphasis placed on the fragility of his life over the portentous possibility of the storm, and it's an amazingly understated film, considering it deals with a potential apocalypse. I was so surprised by just how good it was that I spent ages racking my brain for the flaws I was sure I must have missed. If there is a problem, it lies in the running time, and at 121 minutes there is the tiniest sag in the middle of the film. This is a miniscule problem however, and it took me a long while of thinking to even come up with it. Five minutes probably could have been left out of the middle, but even as it is the film is an enigmatic, heartbreaking and compelling affair that I have no qualms about declaring a low key masterpiece.

We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)

 *Better late than never*

Misconception is a funny thing. Having heard great things about Lionel Shriver's novel We Need To Talk About Kevin, and excited at the prospect of an adaptation directed by Lynne Ramsay, I deliberately cut myself off from information about the about the book and the film. By the time I made my way to the cinema to see it, the only information I had been unable to escape was that it was about the mother of a boy who commits a Columbine style high school massacre (Everyone knows this right? Surely it can't be considered a spoiler.) But if I had been expecting a film thematically similar to Gus Van Zant's Elephant, I was mistaken. The specifics of Kevin's crime, while horrific, are totally irrelevant. The film is not about high school massacres, but about parenthood, and the relationship between Kevin and his mother Eva.

When we are first presented with Eva (Tilda Swinton), we are told nothing about her save for what we can glean from her haggard appearance, hermit lifestyle and the accusatory whispers that follow her everywhere. With a complex narrative structure that jumps backwards and forwards, we catch glimpses of her life before she became a mother and during Kevin's childhood. Although we begin to fill in the details, we are never entirely sure that what we are seeing is the full, objective story. From the moment he is born, Kevin seems to be evil incarnate, with a brooding glare to match Damien from The Omen. People who have criticised this less than subtle negative characterisation seem to have missed the point. We see Kevin as Eva sees him, and she is anything but a reliable narrator. However, the lack of any other perspectives means we never know how much of Kevin's seemingly evil behaviour is real, and how much is being exaggerated by Eva to mask her own failings as a mother. Coupled with the non-linear narrative, all this makes watching We Need To Talk About Kevin rather like trying to complete a jigsaw with only half the pieces and while blinfolded. It's an unsolvable puzzle of a movie, but Ramsay manages to stay one step ahead without ever patronising or condescending her audience.

The cast are incredible, with Swinton giving a surprisingly understated performance, which contrasts sharply with the unashamedly sinister Ezra Miller. John C Reilly also seems to have been overlooked by most for his role as Kevin's father Franklin, who refuses to believe that Kevin is anything other than a 'sweet little boy'. Ramsay however, is the star of the film; her stylised direction adding to the film's unsettling tone and making it seem like a much bigger budget movie than it actually is. All in all, it's a surprisingly low key affair that will probably be overlooked by the major awards who tend to favour flashier films, but it is an unnerving puzzle of a movie that refuses to give you any easy answers, and keeps raising questions long after it's credits have rolled.

Ken Russell: 1927-2011

Last year I woke up on the morning of my birthday only to hear the sad news that Leslie Nielsen, one of the greatest comic actors of his age, had died. This morning I once again woke on my birthday to tragic news; this time it was the death of Ken Russell. Losing a deadpan talent like Nielsen was one thing, but losing one of the most daring, original, brave and talented directors of all time was a tragedy. It wasn't just his death that was so sad (after all, he was 84 and had suffered multiple strokes), but that his extraordinary career seems to have been all but forgotten. The news report announcing his death that I later heard on the radio was shockingly brief, mentioning Women In Love but then tailing off as if Russell had simply retired after the success of that film.

But it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that Russell has faded from the consciousness of mainstream popular culture. After the underrated spy thriller The Billion Dollar Brain and the acclaimed Women In Love, his work became far less mainstream and awards friendly. He was always too provocative, too contemptuous of Hollywood, too unwilling to compromise to ever be thought of as anything other than an outsider. He ignored the whims of Hollywood, and as such they ignored him back and refused to recognise such a prodigious talent. His major breakthrough, Women In Love, caused shock and outrage, but even the normally prudish people behind the Academy Awards, who even decades later would rather reward the tepid Crash than Brokeback Mountain, felt compelled to shower it with nominations. After that however, his films became ever more divisive. The Devils, one of his most notorious works, was a shrieking, hysterical nightmare of violence, sex and religion based on a factual book by Aldous Huxley. While many derided it, with esteemed American critic Roger Ebert giving it a rare zero star rating, many other's felt it to be Russell's incendiary masterpiece. Most notable of it's defenders is Mark Kermode, who has long been among those arguing for a DVD release of the film's full X rated cut; calls that have recently been answered, with a DVD release planned for next March.

This barely begins to scratch the surface of the career, talent and appeal of Ken Russell, and I do not want to get into a detailed obituary. There are people who have written far better accounts of his life, and I do not have the time to mention every film he ever directed. Following The Devils, his work was often mired in controversy and usually far too idiosyncratic to ever be accepted by mainstream audiences. His last two commercial peaks came with 1975's gloriously overblown rock opera Tommy and 1980's haunting, psychedelic sci-fi Altered States, the only Hollywod film he ever made, and ironically one of his best works. Then there are the composer biopics, the horror films, the small TV works; Russell was nothing if not prolific. But his backing dried up and the scale of his films became smaller and smaller. His later films may have been pale shadows of his masterpieces, but the world was a better place for their existence.

Despite being abandoned by critics and audiences, Russell never broke his cardinal rule by making a dull film. His philosophy of “Wake 'em up” meant that even if his later films were horrifically flawed, they were always made even more fascinating for it. He proved that British cinema did not have to just be about kitchen sink dramas and Alfred Hitchcock; it could be flamboyant, provocative, daring and innovative. His drive to be different from everyone else meant that today he is mostly remembered as a director whose once promising talent deserted him after only a few films. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rather than going mainstream, Russell demanded that the mainstream go to him. Most people refused, and for them Russell is a distant memory. For those who rose to the challenge, and threw themselves head first into his work, he will always be remembered as a visionary, and one who would rather have given up completely than make a boring film. He will be deeply missed by many, including myself. If you haven't seen any of his films, you could a lot worse than treating yourself to them. You might love them, or you might hate them. But whatever your opinion, I'm sure he'd have been happy with it.

Drive (2011)

*While editing my Drive review, I accidentally deleted it, so here's a new, improved version*

Well there's not actually that much driving. Glad we sorted that one out. In fact, far from being the vehicular Bayhem that it's misleading marketing suggested, Drive is a sparse, stylised, noir-ish thriller with a strong exploitation edge and hints of existentialism that justifiably won Nicolas Winding Refn the best director award at Cannes.

Ryan Gosling (in his third film in as many months) is the unnamed and laconic Driver who works as a stuntman and mechanic by day, and getaway driver by night. His world expands beyond automobiles when he falls in love with his married neighbour Irene, whose recently paroled husband is in trouble with local gangsters. When Irene and her son are threatened, the Driver intervenes. It's certainly not an imaginitive plot, but Refn uses what he has to minimalist perfection. Gosling gives a terrifically subdued but intense performance as the soft spoken titular character, equal parts Man With No Name, archetypal knight in shining armour and Travis Bickle. Despite his inherently moral intentions in helping Irene, there is a borderline psychotic tendency hiding beneath the implacably cool exterior that rears it's head in the films explosions of extreme ultraviolence. In keeping with the minimalist feel of the film, the violence is scarce but excruciatingly brutal. It has been acknowledged by the film's makers that the Driver's scorpion jacket is a reference to the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog, and it certainly seems that there is something violent and uncontrollable in his very nature. The films supporting cast are also brilliant, with Mulligan sparking perfect chemistry with Gosling and Albert Brooks cast superbly against type as the unashamedly villainous gangster. (There's murmurs of a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod for him)

But despite all this, it's Nicolas Winding Refn who is the real star. He has created something that is disconcertingly original, despite, or maybe due to the disparate elements of early Scorsese, seventies exploitation, urban western and vague existentialism on display. This odd blend sits together far better than you'd imagine, helped by the brilliant synth-pop soundtrack. There are certain moments in Drive that I will probably remember for the rest of my life, and if the film does have flaws, it is all the more interesting for them. In many ways the film resembles it's titular character: cool, laconic and seemingly simple at first, but with a brooding darkness under the surface.

Not So Funny Games

Imagine this: your stern, elderly uncle is telling you off for some petty misdemeanour, all the while wagging his finger in your face patronisingly and doing exactly the same thing that you got into trouble for in the first place. Imagine all that, and you have an idea of what it is like to watch Michael Haneke's Funny Games. It was recommended to me ages ago by somebody whose opinion I trusted, but upon finally watching it recently, it was one of the worst viewing experiences I have ever had.

Ostensibly a horror film, Funny Games sees a family terrorised, held hostage and tortured by two nondescript adolescents who often break the fourth wall and show little regard for cinematic conventions. The idea is clearly to make a profound statement about our relationship with screen violence, pointing out that the terrible events that unfold do so for our entertainment. Rather than put this point across in any interesting or meaningful way however, Haneke (who has actually gone on to make some very good films in the years since) decided to just tell the audience off. For two hours. He seems to have a genuine contempt for the film's audience, and while watching it I kept expecting him to burst into my room with crossed arms and a haughty, patronising gaze, demanding to know why I was watching it. The whole movie feels like a stern lecture, which probably wouldn't be quite so annoying were it not such a nasty and violent movie itself. It's like someone trying to point out to you how cruel fox hunting is by ripping apart a live fox right in front of you and then waving it's corpse around on the end of a stick.

This is all made even worse by the simple fact that the film didn't even reach the audience that Haneke wanted to force his opinions down the throats of. The fact that it was a foreign language film, shown at Cannes and talked about as an intelligent commentary on cinematic violence meant that the mainstream horror audience it was targeted at ('targeted' seems appropriate for such a vicious attack of a film) didn't even see it. Realising that he was preaching to the converted, Haneke went through the effort of remaking the movie, shot-for-shot, in English. Clearly he felt that the audience really, really needed to be told off.

Despite the smug claims of those who champion the film, it's questions and comments aren't even particularly original. Many films have said the same things far more stylishly, subtly and effectively. The idea of the audience as voyeurs, complicit in the crimes being perpetrated on screen can be seen as far back as the brilliant 1960 cult classic Peeping Tom. And then there's the endlessly disturbing Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, the brilliantly ambiguous Man Bites Dog, or even films that questioned the way in which the media marketed violence in general, such as Natural Born Killers or Videodrome. With Funny Games, Michael Haneke was not just raising old questions, he was going to bizarre lengths just to have a go at his own audience. So if you want to be patronised, bullied and accused by an old Austrian bloke for two hours, watch Funny Games. Otherwise, just stick The Texas Chainsaw Massacre back on.

An Incoherent Rant On Remakes

If you were to look at a list of recent cinema releases, you could be forgiven for thinking that Straw Dogs, Sam Peckinpah's highly controversial film about violence, masculinity and revenge from 1971 had been re-released. You would be mistaken. This is a shiny new remake, which inexplicably relocates the action from rural England to the deep south of America and replaces Dustin Hoffman's unhinged performance with the staggeringly bland James Marsden. All of the film's troubling moral complexity and fascinating raggedness is nowhere to be found. But although I am unashamedly wary of remakes in general, my response to this one was one of sheer confusion. It is genuinely puzzling as to why anyone would even consider remaking such an idiosyncratic and intriguingly flawed film. It has nothing to say that wasn't there in the original; no fascinating new insights or perspectives. The original was a flawed film to begin with; Peckinpah himself thought that he had already made his definitive statement about violence with 1969's The Wild Bunch. It can't even by shrugged off as purely financially motivated, as it is very unlikely to draw in any new fans, while admirers of the original will simply not be interested.

But Hollywood's love of inferior remakes seems to have gone into overdrive in the last few years (calling it rebooting or reimagining isn't fooling anyone). It's been most notable with horror films, with new and totally pointless versions of A Nightmare On Elm Street, Halloween, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and even Last House On The Left, arguably the most notorious of all the video nasties. I love horror cinema and will always defend it's artistic integrity and importance, which makes it all the more galling to see them stripped of everything that made the originals unique, exciting, provocative and, most importantly, scary. Instead we have a standard colour pallette of dull browns and a cast hoping for work in the next series of The OC. So strong is the vogue for remaking anything and everything that even the notorious grindhouse shocker I Spit On Your Grave has been remade. This is by far one of the most baffling of all. The few people who didn't find the original to be morally repugnant will surely not be bothered by a remake that is exactly the same as the original (I'm reliably informed that it's the same, I never had any wish to sit through it). One of the most entertainingly misguided of recent years was Neil LaBute's butchery of The Wicker Man, which has at least found a second life as an unintentional comedy thanks to the sight of Nicolas Cage punching a woman while dressed as a bear (see a previous post).

Obviously this has not just been limited to horror films, but it's where the problem is most widespread and most noticeable. And I'm not even going to go into the issue of English language remakes of foreign language films, something that deserves a piece all of it's own (I may have to do something on the subject in the future)

Remakes do not have to be bad. Werner Herzog's Nosferatu, John Carpenter's The Thing, David Cronenberg's The Fly, Brian De Palma's Scarface, the Coen brothers' True Grit; all examples of brilliant remakes that are just as good, if not better than the originals. When those involved have something genuinely new to add to an old story, the results can be spectacular. But for the most part, maybe they should just be left as they are.

The Mystery Of Nicolas Cage

There is a point in Neil LaBute's horrifically misguided remake of The Wicker Man in which Nicolas Cage punches a woman in the face, while dressed as a bear. It was at this point that it became clear that Cage could sink no lower. He's an actor who stars in films with increasingly stupid titles, most of which comprise of two words that have no relation to each other at all (I'm looking at you, Drive Angry). After watching films like Con Air, The Rock and Lord Of War, in which someone clearly mistook woodenness for gravitas, it's hard to argue with those who say that he is an appallingly bad actor.

And yet...

Every so often I'm reminded that he is actually phenomenally good. His Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas was more than justified, and his performance in Adaptation is one of the best I've ever seen. He seems constantly on the verge of simply collapsing and exploding, and you believe in it completely. He was equally good in 2009's Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans, in which he gave off an air of genuinely unnerving intensity and insanity. It's fitting that the film was directed by Werner Herzog, as there were echoes of the insanely brilliant, or brilliantly insane, Klaus Kinski in Cage's performance. And then there was his scene stealing weirdo father in Kick Ass, arguably the most entertaining part of the film. In fact, up until Leaving Las Vegas Cage had a very promising career, having been put on the map by the Coens with the brilliant Raising Arizona. He'd even managed to save the otherwise dire action film Deadfall by being so ludicrously over the top that he turned it into a comedy.

All this begs the question: what happened to Nicolas Cage? After winning an Oscar did he just decide to agree to any old crap that was thrown his way? Did he have some sort of accident that robbed him of any sense of quality control? Or did he just decide that the money he was being offered was a fair price for squandering his talent? There is a very funny sketch on youtube in which Cage's agent becomes more and more frustrated at his client's inability to say no to any of the increasingly ridiculous film parts offered to him. It's certainly funny, but you suspect that it's worryingly close to the truth. It seems that what Nicolas Cage really needs is a director who knows how to harness him: when to keep him restrained and when to let him rip. The Herzog and Kinski analogy actually fits surprisingly well here. Herzog was able to manipulate Kinski's volatile nature to his advantage to get performances of startling intensity. At his best, and with the right guidance, Cage could give these types of performances. The rest of the time, we'll have to put up with him punching a woman in a bear suit.

Tyrannosaur (2011)

*Sorry it’s a bit short, I wrote it for my student paper so I was working to a word limit*

Given their frequent collaborations and close friendship, it is no surprise that this directorial début from Paddy Considine bears a passing resemblance to the films of Shane Meadows. What is surprising is that rather than being a second rate Meadows imitation, Tyrannosaur is brilliantly assured in it’s own right; a brutal, beautiful film about rage, violence and ultimately, redemption. That it portrays this without descending into sentimentality is largely down to it’s uncompromising realism, and it’s central performances.

Peter Mullan is incredible as Joseph, a man caught in a cycle of violence and self destruction, but the real triumph is a startlingly brilliant, fragile performance from Peep Show’s Olivia Colman as Hannah, the charity worker who tries to befriend and redeem him. But her pious charity work and sunny optimism hide a domestic hell far worse than Joseph’s and it is her plight and the unravelling of her seemingly perfect life that are the most uncomfortable and tragic aspects of the movie.

Tyrannosaur is not an easy film to watch, and it’s darkness and graphic violence will certainly not be to everyone’s taste, but if you can stomach it, it is an abrasive, yet often uplifting and consistently moving human drama.