The Master (2012)

The Master is not a film about Scientology. It is neither the cult expose or the thinly veiled L. Ron Hubbard biopic that so many were expecting back when it was first announced. Instead it sees director Paul Thomas Anderson returning to the marginal lives and restless souls of his 1997 breakthrough Boogie Nights. Joaquin Phoenix plays Freddie Quell, a WWII veteran and deeply troubled alcoholic drifter who finds himself drawn to writer Lancaster Dodd and his faith based movement The Cause. If There Will Be Blood was a dark fable of the men who built America on a foundation of greed and brutality, then The Master is about the attempts to reassemble it in a shattered, post-war world.

Anderson abandons conventional narrative almost completely in favour of character drama as Dodd's creation grows and he attempts to locate and heal the source of Freddie's unrest. As the ambiguously intentioned Dodd, Philip Seymour Hoffman reassures everyone that he's still one of the finest actors of his generation, his charmingly arrogant demeanour and explosions of startling rage a mixture of Hubbard and Orson Welles. One of the film's biggest surprises is his steely wife Peggy, played entirely against type by a Machiavellian Amy Adams. The implication that she is the real mastermind behind The Cause is one of the film's many avenues left tantalisingly unexplored.

Nobody is anything less than perfect, but Phoenix is beyond extraordinary. Freddie is a fascinating creation, demanding and deserving of comparisons to the great outsiders of cinema; to the likes of Travis Bickle, Randle McMurphy and Jim Stark. It's a performance of both jaw-dropping magnitude and heartbreaking subtlety. Phoenix's entire body is bent out of shape, and his remarkable face is twisted into a permanent mask of inscrutable pain and regret. Whenever his anger bursts out in acts of physical violence, as it often does, it's easy to believe that Anderson simply set Phoenix loose and pointed a camera at the ensuing chaos. No matter how the rest of The Master fares with audiences, critics or awards ceremonies, I have little doubt that Phoenix's performance will go down as a truly great one.

These characters dominate the screen, and Anderson gives them suitable scenery to chew. The cinematography is without a doubt the most breathtakingly stunning that you will see all year, and the period detail is beyond reproach. It is set in a perfectly recreated world, and yet it may as well take place on Mars. There's a surreal, disconnected feel to this world that is as unrecognisable and dreamlike as Freddie's hazy recollections of his past. How much of this is his memories? How much of it is even real? Anderson isn't telling.

It's hard not to admire the bravery of Anderson's technique. In many ways he has become the anti-Quentin Tarantino. Whereas the once great Tarantino has retreated further into his fortress of movie geek references with every film, Anderson has shot off the rails of conventional cinema completely and is now ploughing his own trail through uncharted territory. Undoubtedly brave, but certainly not something that will impress everyone.

Whether you like the film or not will depend entirely on your response to its endless hall of mirrors approach. It is an ideal film for debate, but certainly not one that all will find engaging. It's a defiantly unfathomable work, shot through with a deep core of sadness. But ultimately it is a film about two men: one whose arrogance and brilliance birth something that grows far beyond his control, and one broken beyond repair. Freddie is a man in thrall to the search for his very own Rosebud; a past that may never have existed and that can never be reclaimed.

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Rupert Brooke famously wrote that there is “some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England”. It's a sentiment that seems particularly fitting for Toby Jones in Peter Strickland's not-quite-horror Berberian Sound Studio. Jones is Gilderoy, a man whose tweed suits and maladroit demeanour are the walking, breathing embodiment of Dorking. He's a sound engineer for pastoral nature documentaries who has been brought to the dimly lit studios of an Italian horror studio to provide the sounds for a giallo: the kind of glossy, gory pulp chillers perfected by Dario Argento in the 1970s. Tasked with aurally recreating the sadistic, sexually explicit violence of a trashy horror and surrounded by bullish producer Francesco and sleazy studio head Santini, Gilderoy attempts to immerse himself in his work, unable or unwilling to realise that his ordered world is falling apart.

Strickland's film is never quite a horror film. We are never shown the horrific footage that Gilderoy is providing the soundtrack for. Instead the film seems more interested in the sounds of horror; or perhaps more accurately, the horrors of sound. The hermetically sealed world of the sound studio, where no scream or stabbing sound effect can be escaped, drips with a very palpable malevolence, like a dial and wire filled room of The Shining's Overlook Hotel. Much has been made of the film's similarities to the work of Lynch or Bergman, and while it's true that it shares Mulholland Dr's sense of unspeakable dread and Persona's shifting identities, what is most impressive is that Berberian Sound Studio seems always to be its own beast. Strickland has learnt his lessons from these film makers without ever relying on their formulas. Some have complained about the lack of a definitive third act, but for the movie to increase gears in its final third would be to drag it too far into territory derivative of film makers like Lynch. Berberian Sound Studios takes it's time. It is patient, it waits, and it ends when it wants to end. Anything else would be cheapening.

Without anything to hold the movie down, it would be easy for it to get carried away with its own cleverness. Fortunately Toby Jones provides just such an anchor. Jones is surely one of the best character actors working, and here he gives what may be the performance of his career. Like Gene Hackman in The Conversation, Gilderoy tries to escape into a world of sound as he descends further into paranoia. Never could a fish be more out of water, and Strickland even rings several moments of brilliantly icy black humour out of his predicament. His pudgy, crumpled face moves through an entire spectrum of emotions with the movement of an eyeball or a twitch of a muscle. Strickland gives us many reasons to admire Berberian Sound Studio, but Jones gives us a reason to care. Together they have created one of the most distinctive, bold and memorable films of the year.

I'm back

I took a break from the blog over the summer, but now I intend to start writing again. Bear with me, it may take a while to get back into the habit.

Joe.

Cosmopolis (2012)

Cosmopolis must surely rank as one of the slowest road movies ever made. It follows the gradual crawl of a white limousine as it moves from one side of Manhattan to the other. Inside is Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson), an insanely rich and staggeringly young billionaire who simply wants a haircut. Packer is the pinnacle of the ultra-rich 1%, one of Tom Wolfe's self styled Masters of the Universe; in this case, a portable, self contained universe. We see Packer's self engineered financial and personal downfall as he is ferried ever closer to a climactic confrontation with Unabomber-like former employee Benno Levin (Paul Giamatti), the nadir of the other 99%.

In terms of it's place in the oeuvre of director David Cronenberg, the easiest and most obvious connections would be with his other automotive nightmare, Crash. Both films create a glacial, hermetically sealed world, but whereas Crash allows us to peer in at this world through the glass, Cosmopolis places us inside of it. The interior of Packer's limo, bathed in the blue light of the screens bringing him news of his financial destruction, is scarily silent. Whenever the door is opened, the sounds of the city are almost deafening. His succession of advisers and analysts all speak in stilted sentences and strangely hollow sound bites, Samantha Morton in particular being disarmingly blank and angular as Packer's personal theoretician. As the cold and vulpine Packer, Pattinson undoubtedly has the hardest job, being on screen for almost every second of the movie, but he adds further proof of Cronenberg's canny eye for casting. He plays Packer as someone who has done too much, too young, and has nothing left but the thrill of losing it all. When we first see him holding court in his limo, he's dwarfed by his throne like chair. And when he exits the limo to confront an attacker, a gun tucked into his trousers, he does so with the cocky strut of a schoolboy trying to act harder than he feels. It's a pitch perfect performance that proves there is more to Pattinson than an army of screaming and swooning fans.

Paul Giamatti, on the other hand, has nothing to prove. The final twenty minutes of the movie, where Packer finally exits his universe and enters that of Giamatti's balding, dishevelled Levin, are the real triumph of Cosmopolis. The likes of Levin, those who have fallen through the cracks, have no place in Packer's world; “Do you think people like me can't happen?” Levin demands. He's the abandoned chickens of rampant capitalism come home to roost, desperation in his eyes and a gun in his hand. It's a gold standard of naturalistic scenery chewing, and armed with Cronenberg's style and Don DeLillo's words, he doesn't put a foot wrong.

Those looking for grand, damning statements on the evils of capitalism may not find Cosmopolis entirely satisfactory. Cronenberg seems more interested in showing modern society stretched to breaking point, threatening to snap at any moment. It's an incredibly easy film to admire, and an extremely hard one to love. It's certainly not a film for everyone, but then there's no fun in films that aim to be for everyone, and by extension are for no one. Cosmopolis is a film for some, and on those grounds it is almost flawless. And that's just fine by me.

Prometheus (2012)

Prometheus is not Alien. It seems necessary to make this clear. In fact, thematically it bears more relation to Ridley Scott's own Blade Runner. Both films ask what it means to be human. Blade Runner asks these questions indirectly, and even comes close to giving answers; Prometheus goes straight ahead and asks the questions, then never fully answers them. In this case, they are raised by a team of scientists travelling to a distant planet to find the beings responsible for life on Earth. The name of their ship is Prometheus, and the implications are clear: you don't mess with the gods. Whether or not you like the film will probably depend on how much you care about it's lack of satisfying answers.

Speaking for myself, I have no problem with remaining mystified. Too many films are lacking a sense of awe and mystery, and in several key scenes Prometheus delivers just this. The breathtaking design of the film alone is worth the price of admission; it has to be the most visually beautiful film I've seen all year. The problem lies with it's failure to succeed on a human level. The embarrassingly weak script and a disjointed story struggle against a strong cast who have to work hard to keep us interested. Noomi Rapace is a strong leading presence in her first English speaking lead role, with Scott opting for more than a simple Ripley re-tread. Her unshaken religious faith, even in the face of possible answers to life's great questions, is surprisingly original and refreshing. She's helped by a solid supporting cast, but even their combined strengths are overshadowed by the presence of Michael Fassbender. His performance as David, the ship's android, has been receiving so much acclaim that praising him has almost become a cliché. It's justified however, and in many ways David is the central crux of the movie, providing the same function as Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty in Blade Runner. They both share an Aryan flawlessness that manifests as veiled contempt of the humans around them, as well as a vague yearning to be as 'human' as them. There is a nice touch as David is seen modelling his appearance and speech pattern on Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. Later he offers a quote from that film to hint at the futility of the mission: “There is nothing in the desert, and no man needs nothing”. 

Ultimately, Prometheus doesn't hold together. It's fails to come as close as Blade Runner to answering any of it's central questions, and to describe the plot and script as messy would be far too kind. It is so staggeringly ambitious that it's failure to succeed is almost inevitable. It never works as a whole, but there are several moments when it soars.

Reviews in a Nutshell

As I've mentioned, I'm right in the middle of my exams and so haven't been able to write full reviews for the films I have seen recently.


Instead, here's a very quick run through, in the order that I saw them:


The Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists- As charming and witty as you would expect from Aardman, if not their most memorable.

The Cabin In The Woods- Rarely have I had this much fun in the cinema. A smart satire made by people who love the genre, and a lot more enjoyable than the similarly self-referential Funny Games (which I hate).


The Avengers- less than the sum of it's parts, but brilliantly enjoyable and funny while you're watching it.


Jeff, Who Lives At Home- Sweet, warm and funny, but ultimately rather forgettable.


The Raid- If I see a more brilliantly thrilling, hyper-violent film all year, I'll be mightily impressed. I'll also be surprised if it doesn't sneak into my top ten of the year.

Apologies...

... for the lack of posts recently, but I'm right in the middle of my exam period.

I've tried to find time for reviews of Avengers Assemble, Cabin in the Woods, The Pirates! and Jeff, Who Lives At Home, but you try writing reviews when you have Illuminations by Walter Benjamin breathing down your neck.

Once they're out of the way I shall be back to wasting my free time with this blog. Never fear.

Joe.

The Raven (2012)

*A bit short, but I was working to a word limit*

The spectre of Guy Ritchie's surprisingly and embarrasingly enjoyable Sherlock Holmes films looms large over James McTeigue's fantastical take on the last five days of Edgar Allen Poe like... well, a raven. Although it nicely imitates the classic Hammer meets steampunk look Ritchie's films established, The Raven forgets to borrow any of the former's self-awareness and slightly mocking humour. It remains po-faced long after it should have cracked a smile. For such a ludicrous premise, it's stony faced attempt at gravitas is pretty much unforgivable, especially as it's about a writer with an infamous acid wit and macabre sense of humour.

Even John Cusack, an effortlessly likeable actor capable of wading through the very worst movies with his dignity intact, can't save this film; although he tries his very hardest. His Poe is suitably ragged, washed up and prone to violent outbursts, but even this isn't enough to stop the deluge of vacuous heavy-handedness that McTeigue brings to the table. There's nothing here that couldn't be seen, but done far more effectively, with a double bill of Se7en and Roger Corman's Pit and the Pendulum. Save yourself a trip to the cinema, and just watch those two instead.

The Oscars 2012: Predictions

Hollywood's annual shameless back slapping is nearly with us again, so for several of the major categories, I've gone through and suggested who I think will win, who from the nominees I think should win and who should have been nominated. Feel free to come back on Monday morning and tell me how wrong I was:

Best Picture

Will win: The Artist. I just can't see it being anything else

Should win: Tricky. It's a fairly patchy category this year, and The Artist was a magnificent film, but my personal favourite was Hugo.

Should have been there: Drive, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and We Need To Talk About Kevin are the three that spring to mind. I'm sure that room could also have been made for Shame. Martha Marcy May Marlene was also a brilliant film, but it's a million miles removed from a typical Oscar nominee. If they got rid of the patronising foreign language category, A Separation would also have been a must, and The Skin I Live In would have been a brave choice. As it stands, the category is something of a stinker.

Best Director

Will win: Michel Hazanavicius

Should win: Although the film itself was an admirable but massively flawed mess, I'm going to go with Terrence Malick.

Should have been there: Lynne Ramsay and Nicolas Winding Refn. Would have been nice to see Pedro Almodovar and Tomas Alfredson in there too.

Best Actress

Will win: A hard one to call. Meryl Streep's momentum seems to finally be burning out, and Viola Davis is seeming ever more likely.

Should win: Again, it's hard to judge, as it's not a particularly strong category and I haven't seen Albert Nobbs yet, although I've heard that Glenn Close is very good. Anyone other than Meryl Streep, then.

Should have been there: Olivia Colman, for giving one of the best performances of any actor or actress all year. Leaving out Tilda Swinton was unforgivable too, and Elizabeth Olsen should have been in with a chance for Martha Marcy etc. Also, Charlize Theron was magnificently bitchy in Young Adult. Basically I'd replace all the nominees.

Best Actor

Will win: Dujardin seems to have confidently emerged as the frontrunner, and I'd say Clooney is snapping at his heels.

Should win: Gary Oldman. Next question

Should have been there: Fassbender for Shame is the first name that springs to mind. In what experts will soon be calling 'The Year of Ryan Gosling' it seems strange that he wasn't nominated for anything. I'd have gone with Drive. Michael Shannon too, for the excellent Take Shelter.

Best Supporting Actress

Will win: Octavia Spencer

Should win: Hmmm... Berenice Bejo, even though she should really be in the Best Actress category. It's not a great category to be honest. Although apparently Janet McTeer is very good.

Should have been there: Vanessa Redgrave for Coriolanus. Without a doubt. Also, Carey Mulligan for Shame. Jessica Chastain has also been nominated for the wrong film, she was much, much better in Take Shelter than in The Help. And although I hated the movie itself, Charlotte Gainsbourg was as terrific as ever in Melancholia. 

 

Best Supporting Actor

Will win: Christopher Plummer. Somebody could take it from him but I very much doubt it.

Should win: I want to say Max Von Sydow because he's one of my favourite actors, but I just can't justify picking him. Christopher Plummer was great, but I'm going to go with Kenneth Branagh, who was outstanding as Laurence Olivier.

Should have been there: Albert Brooks for Drive, and John Hawkes for Martha Marcy etc. Ezra Miller did the seemingly impossible by holding his own against Tilda Swinton, and about the half the cast of Tinker Tailor could safely fit into the list, particularly Benedict Cumberbatch.

Best Foreign Language Film

Will win: A Separation.

Should win: A Separation. There's a couple I haven't seen though, so I can't judge entirely.

Should have been there: The Skin I Live In, La Quottro Volte and Mysteries of Lisbon.

Best Original Screenplay

Will win: The Artist or Midnight in Paris

Should win: A Separation or Margin Call, but I'd be happy with The Artist or Midnight in Paris.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Will win: The Descendants or Tinker Tailor

Should win: Tinker Tailor

Should have been there: Coriolanus, for hacking down one of Shakepeare's most unwieldy plays into something lean and streamlined.

Best Original Score

Will win: The Artist. The music does have to carry most of the film, after all.

Should win: Tinker Tailor

And of course, Man or Muppet is quite rightly going to win Best Original Song.

The Muppets (2012)

Did puppeteer Jim Henson know, all those years ago, when he first began to develop his surreal felt vaudeville troupe, just how successful, and how beloved they would become? That they would have fans in every walk of life, and from every corner of the globe? One of those fans is Jason Segel, and like any good fan he was distraught with the Muppets' fall from favour in the early 90s. Unlike most fans however, he has starred in several successful comedies, giving him the chance to put his heroes back on our screens. He also plays the part of Gary, a lifelong Muppets fan who, along with his girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) and his Muppet obsessed and suspiciously felt like brother Walter, travels to LA to tour The Muppet studios and theatre. They find the studios derelict and about to be sold to evil oil tycoon Tex Richman (Chris Cooper, clearly having the time of his life) who secretly plans to demolish them and drill for oil. After tracking down the now lonely and reclusive Kermit in his mansion, they persuade him to track down and reform the old gang to put on one last show and save the theatre.

Above all else, the reason that the new Muppet film works so well is that it has clearly been made by people who love, know, and most importantly, understand The Muppets and their appeal. They have beautifully retained the anarchic, subversive and self referencing humour that shows little regard for logic, narrative conventions or even the laws of physics. Even the celebrity cameos never feel smug or forced, and the songs from Flight of the Conchords' Bret McKenzie are simply superb.

Just as with the Toy Story films however, the bravest decision has been to give the film a real emotional depth. There's a deep and melancholic sadness to much of the film, as the Muppets are forced to battle against the fact that the world has moved on, and that they are seen as relics of a bygone age. When Kermit roams his mansion, gazing longingly at the portraits of his former friends, it seems incredible just how much sadness and loss is conveyed by a green felt puppet. But one of the greatest triumphs of The Muppets has always been that we never see felt puppets. We see fully rounded characters, from the harried Kermit to the perennially optimistic Fozzie Bear, and every step of their journey seems as real as it would with live actors. When Kermit begins a rendition of the original Muppet Movie's 'Rainbow Connection' and is joined onstage by the rest of the Muppets for the song's finale, it's hard not to be moved (or in my case, not to cry). For this has always been the real brilliance of The Muppets: the certain knowledge that even when everything else is looking grey, a song, a dance and a badly cracked joke will always make the world that little bit better.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2012)

For someone with enough of an ego to believe that there may actually be people out there who read this blog, what I'm about to say may sound surprising. If you have already decided to see Martha Marcy May Marlene, please stop reading immediately. It's true that often films can be enjoyed more the less you know about them, but with MMMM, as I will call it from now on, it is ideal to enter the cinema with as little idea of possible as to what you are about to see. For anyone still reading, I'll try and give away as little of the plot as possible.

At the very beginning of the film, we see the titular character, played by Elizabeth Olsen (the one it's okay to like) running away from an unusual, but seemingly harmless rural commune and taking refuge with her estranged sister and brother-in-law. Needless to say, nothing is what it seems. Olsen is not the plucky heroine her flight would suggest, and the 'family' she has fled from, led by father figure Patrick (John Hawkes), is not the eccentric but oddly idyllic retreat it may have appeared. For anyone who knows anything about America in the 1960s, faint bells of recognition should be ringing at the idea of a close knit 'family' of misfits and the disenfranchised living in the wilderness, led by a manipulative 'father' and making night time excursions into people's houses.

Considering that this is Sean Durkin's debut, the directing is brilliantly assured and the performances are uniformly magnificent, particularly the fractured Olsen and the horribly sinister Hawkes, unbearably creepy without ever being overstated. Although it may never seem like it, MMMM is at it's core a horror movie, albeit a sparse, enigmatic and intelligent one. Rather than offer the puerile gross outs of Hostel or the cheap bump in the night shtick of Paranormal Activity, MMMM succeeds where so many horrors fail: it slowly creeps under your skin and then stays there long after the credits have rolled.

I hope this has been unhelpful. Just trust me, and see it.

Coriolanus (2012)

As Ralph Fiennes and Gerard Butler, covered in dirt, sweat and blood, grapple violently on the floor, in a surprisingly similar manner to Alan Bates and Oliver Reed wrestling nude in Women In Love, it should be clear that this is not your standard Shakespeare adaptation. This is the Bard stripped down to barest essentials and shifted to what looks like the modern day Balkans. Coriolanus, about the titular Roman general who is banished and swears revenge against his own people, is renowned as one of Shakespeare's densest and most convoluted plays, and Fiennes deserves praise for not only clarifying the narrative but bringing to the fore themes that make it a surprisingly contemporary film. It's obvious questions about class war, democracy and the nation state make it a fitting film to come at the end of a year of rolling news, increasingly violent protest and the Arab Spring. Even a cameo from Jon Snow, speaking full Shakespearean verse, feels un-gimmicky and strangely appropriate.

Fiennes does a perfectly adequate job behind the camera, making the explosive battle scenes unbearably intense, but he does an exemplary job in front of it. Acting with his entire body, he turns a pitiless, fascistic brute into a scarily charismatic figure; his eyes alone carrying a singular determination that is almost terrifying. Coriolanus is not an easy figure to engage with and Fiennes makes no attempt to soften his disdain and contempt for the masses. He's helped by some stunning support from Jessica Chastain (continuing her quest to be in every single film ever released from now on), Brian Cox and James Nesbitt, and even Gerard Butler turns in a fine performance as Coriolanus' sworn enemy. But casting a shadow over the film is the presence of Vanessa Redgrave as Coriolanus' manipulative mother. She runs away with every single scene she is in and reminds those who needed reminding that when she is on form, no actress on Earth can touch her. It's a towering performance that in any sane world would have seen her name in every single Best Supporting Actress list; clearly this is not a sane world. Her performance, contrasted with Chastain's, adds an interesting female element to the film; of the two major female characters in this predominantly male world of war and politics, one is meek and timid and the other manipulative and matriarchal. Like with many boxing movies, Coriolanus shows how in an overly aggressive, male dominated world such as that of the film, women are pushed to the sidelines, where they are forced to either look on in horror or egg on those in the ring for their own benefit. Combined with it's questions about politicians and the masses, and the corrupting nature of power, Coriolanus is a raw, brutal and primal film that unceremoniously but very effectively dumps Shakespeare right into the middle of the new decade.