Review: Sleeping Beauty (2011)

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2011, Emily Browning, Ewen Leslie, Julia Leigh, Rachael Blake, Sleeping Beauty

Director: Julia Leigh
Stars: Emily Browning, Rachael Blake, Ewen Leslie
Plot: A university student takes a job as a drugged ‘Sleeping Beauty’, giving old men an odd, erotic experience. But it’s not long before she begins to wonder what happens while she is asleep.

Not so long ago, the mere mention of Australian cinema would be met with the inevitable references to the Crocodile Dundee franchise. Despite a purple patch in the mid-1990s with films such as The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), Muriel’s Wedding (1994) and Shine (1996), only now and then have Aussie movies been massively successful at the box office.  Recently however, there has been a resurgence in filmmaking from Down Under, resulting in many more Antipodean films regularly permeating the global film and DVD market. But will Sleeping Beauty continue this trend and appeal to a wide audience?

Student Lucy (Browning) makes ends meet by volunteering as a test subject at the university’s laboratory, as a waitress at a local bar and also a part-time job in an office. She is seen at a nightclub offering herself up for sex, although it is never revealed whether or not she gets paid. Lucy’s flatmate shows an obvious dislike for her and she spends time with her friend Birdmann (Leslie), who appears to be attempting (and failing) to recover from alcoholism. Lucy responds to a job newspaper advertisement and meets the mysterious Clara (Blake), who explains that the job is as a freelance silver service waitress, dressed in lingerie, following this up with the random statement that ‘no penetration is involved’. After a body inspection, Lucy accepts the $250 an hour job offer with no reservations.

Her first assignment is to serve a group of elderly gentlemen and one woman, at a posh dinner. After managing to do her job reasonably well, Lucy returns home and burns the money she was paid. She is then invited back by Clara for a completely different job – she is driven to a large mansion in the country where she is expected to submit to the men at the previous dinner, albeit drugged. Once again, Clara assures her about the lack of violation, Lucy takes the drug via a cup of tea and then goes to bed as requested. Upon waking, she is disorientated but quite willing to go back for more sessions as she is getting paid well. Unbeknownst to Lucy though, not every ‘client’ is respectful and she suspects something is not quite right, setting out to discover what really happens when she is unconscious.

Sleeping Beauty is little more than a pretentious, muddled, mess of a film. With practically zero cohesive narrative, the scenes feel like they have been literally cobbled together from a mass of short films to create one feature. You can tell from the very first reel that this is going to be a plodding, dull experience. Emily Browning’s Lucy is seen walking into a laboratory for an unexplained test while the camera keeps perfectly still – it never tracks her movements or gives a wide shot to show what else is going on in the room. This is a popular technique employed by ‘daring’ directors who think they are out-Kubricking Stanley Kubrick. There’s nothing wrong with doing something different, but perhaps Julia Leigh thinks she can distract us with odd camera angles so we don’t notice that the storyline makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

There are at least twenty (if not more) scenes that could be completely cut out. Emily’s ‘relationship’ with Birdmann, which has no bearing on anything else that happens in the film, is strange to say the least. There’s a hint that they might have attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings together in the past, but we are left in the dark. Emily randomly asking an old boyfriend to marry her at a wake and getting out of bed to get partially dressed and then getting back in, are just two completely inexplicable scenes that are shoved in – almost to flesh out the running time. Then there are the oddest scenes of all, which are based around Emily’s weird job. Exploring a theme of sexuality in this way is an interesting premise, but the execution in the script is very wide of the mark. One old gentleman (if you can call him that) enters the room with Clara and goes on a major literary ramble which is supposed to convey his sadness at missing opportunities when he was a young man, but instead it only adds to the extreme pretentiousness and inexplicable plot which is frankly baffling.

Sleeping Beauty is certainly thought-provoking, but unfortunately not in the way it was intended. With sparse dialogue and a vast array of unexplained subplots, what should be an interesting exploration of life and death is instead the most ill-judged, confusing 95 minutes you will probably ever experience.

Rating:

Review: Tyrannosaur (2011)

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2011, Eddie Marsan, Olivia Colman, Paddy Considine, Peter Mullan, Tyrannosaur

Director: Paddy Considine
Stars: Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman, Eddie Marsan
Plot: Joseph is prone to outbursts of rage and violence but finds solace when he meets Hannah, a charity shop worker.

There are two extreme schools of thought as far as British films (not made by, or for, Hollywood) are concerned. On the one hand you have the light-hearted, usually quirky comedies like Submarine (2010) or Tamara Drewe (2010), which play on the regional stereotypes and makes fun of them. Then on the other, we have the dark, gritty dramas such as Kill List (2011) and Another Year (2010) which are deeply rooted in realism and rely on massive character flaws to create empathy with their audience. Tyrannosaur most definitely belongs to the latter of these categories – it is a brooding film full of difficult themes such as domestic violence and forging friendships in almost impossible circumstances, but it also has a heart which is due to the superb performances from its leads.

Joseph (Mullan), an unemployed widower living on a tough council estate in Leeds, has a few issues, to say the least. Not only is his drinking getting out of control, but he takes out his frustrations on his dog who he kicks to death after being thrown out of the betting shop. After he is ejected from his local post office, Joe goes on a drinking spree and returns to smash a window in a fit of rage. He repeatedly applies a sledgehammer to his garden shed and is beaten up and left for dead by a group of men – he is essentially living out the rest of his life in solitude, anger and desperation. In amongst his seemingly futile search for some kind of meaning to his life, Joe stumbles into a charity shop where he meets the timid Hannah (Colman). She attempts to find out what is troubling Joe, but is initially rebuffed as he is hardly in a mood for talking to anyone – eventually he opens up to her, as does she to him.

Whereas Joe’s life mainly consists of wandering alone trying to find direction, Hannah’s story is rather different. She is married to James (Marsan), a sociopath who has little regard for the well-being of his wife. In their very first encounter on-screen, James urinates on Hannah as she sleeps on the sofa – this is typical of his  callous behaviour which culminates in a particularly brutal rape of Hannah on the bedroom floor. Both Joe and Hannah have to deal with the raw emotion of hate, but where Joe continually lashes out, Hannah has to internalise her feelings, which build to a crescendo. As the two characters find solace in each other, Hannah tries to find a way to escape her abusive husband and Joe reveals why he called his late wife Tyrannosaur. Joe also finds an unlikely ally in his neighbour’s son Sam (Samuel Bottomley), but can he and Hannah find some stability and contentment in their lives before it’s too late?

Where Tyrannosaur can be labelled as a triumph is in the acting. With such a tough subject matter, the onus is firmly on Peter Mullan and Olivia Colman to convey the hurt, pain and tragedy of their characters to the full – they are up to the task and then some. Raw emotion is etched on Mullan’s face throughout as a man who believes his life has reached a dead-end and there is no way out. Colman’s Hannah is introduced as a God-fearing, hesitant woman, but grows to become more self-assured even though she struggles to find a way to cope with the constant barrage of abuse from James, both verbal and psychological. For all their troubles, the lead characters’ interactions forge a touching relationship that belies their own respective problems. This could easily be turned into a play, such is the sparseness of the character count and the power that could be created in a theatre.

As feature directorial debuts go, this one is a cracker. Paddy Considine, most famously the ill-fated journalist Simon Ross in The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), expands the original story of his short film Dog Altogether (2007) with the same leads. The result is an achingly downbeat yet simultaneously uplifting tale, proving that even in the most dire situations, a redemption of sorts can still be found. With the violence being frequent at first, Considine as screenwriter and director alternates these scenes with the gradually softening of Joe’s apparent hard-as-nails psyche, and we begin to feel real sympathy for his character despite the fact that he carries out such a brutal act in the very first scene.

Make no mistake, Tyrannosaur is not an easy watch by any means but with terrific direction and such superb acting on show from its leads, this is an altogether different kind of film that’s well worth a watch.

Rating:

Review: Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011)

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2011, Crazy Stupid Love, John Requa, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell

Directors: Glen Ficarra, John Requa
Stars: Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore
Plot: A middle-aged man gets a shock when his wife asks for a divorce. He then starts dating again for the first time in years, with help from his new friend.

Here’s an interesting thought. What if you had been married for a number of years, had a few kids and settled down in your career but then your other half suddenly declares that they wanted a divorce? Such a shock to the system would also include the realisation that you would eventually be obliged to date again, but where would you start? This is the situation facing the main protagonist of Crazy, Stupid, Love, whose life has been turned upside down by his wife’s out-of-the-blue bombshell.

Steve Carell is Cal Weaver, a man who is about to have a mid-life crisis of epic proportions. His wife Emily (Moore) reveals that she had an affair with work colleague David Lindhagen (Kevin Bacon) and wants to end their marriage. Cal moves out of the family home that he also shares with his son Robbie (Jonah Bobo) and Molly (Joey King) into his own apartment. Meanwhile, lothario Jacob Palmer (Gosling), regularly chats up women in his local bar, notching up a whole host of one-night stands. However he fails to lure Hannah (Emma Stone) into bed, something which he finds particularly inexplicable. Jacob notices Cal sitting at the bar bemoaning his recent poor luck to any woman who’ll listen to him for more than five minutes and decides to help him to rediscover his touch with women.

As Cal and Jacob’s friendship develops, so does Cal’s ability to pull women after initially falling flat. He chooses one in particular, Kate (Marisa Tomei) who he persuades to take back to his apartment for the night. more women follow, but Cal just can’t seem to get over the break-up of his relationship with Emily. Hannah is revealed to be a law student who, after passing her bar exam, dumps her boyfriend Richard (Josh Groban) after he insensitively fails to propose marriage to her. She encounters Jacob once again on purpose, with the intention of having sex, but they end up going back to Jacob’s for an all-night chat about each other. Robbie develops a massive crush on his babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), but after a series of misunderstandings we learn that Jessica actually has a crush herself on Cal. As Cal’s brief fling with Kate is discovered by Emily in one of the most embarrassing ways possible, the interconnecting acquaintances and relationships have much more in common than we first thought.

Crazy, Stupid, Love is an entertaining comedy drama, which has more of a hint of Hitch (2005) about it. Jacob teaching Cal the ways of wooing the opposite sex treads on the same ground that Will Smith’s Alex Hitchens and the Albert Brennaman of Kevin James previously graced. The difference here is that there are many more layers to the storyline than just Cal getting his mojo back. With more a sense of drama with large dollops of comedy dropped in, screenwriter Dan Fogelman’s take on a man’s recovery from his own ‘relationshipwreck’ is just one of the amusing plot strands. Jacob and Hannah’s subplot is dealt with in a more original way – instead of having the usual one-night stand followed by an awkward morning-after conversation, this is reversed, so that the initial clumsiness is followed by a genuine and believable friendship that becomes something more afterwards.

Steve Carell plays Cal in a similar manner to his Andy in 40 Year Old Virgin (2005), but with a more morose tone which fits in with the mood of the film. Even though his signature character trait is to shout random outbursts, here he is more restrained and this is perhaps his best role for quite a while. Ryan Gosling is very well-suited to his character Jacob – although be assured that he is not just a token addition to the cast to appeal to the female audience. Julianne Moore plays the largely serious Emily to Carell’s lighter Cal well and it’s also great to see Emma Stone doing something other than the quirky high-school character she has made her own. Also of note is Marisa Tomei in yet another terrific yet small role – on this evidence, she has still got ‘it’.

Crazy, Stupid, Love has its moments, but isn’t particularly memorable. A nicely balanced two-thirds of a film with a great cast proves not to be quite enough though. The plot twist towards the end will provoke a few laughs, but the graduation speech-inspired ending is a little too cutesy and clichéd to be taken seriously. Otherwise this is a wise choice if you want a decent storyline with a few chuckles or maybe you just feel the need to ogle Ryan Gosling’s ridiculous torso.

Rating:

Review: I Don’t Know How She Does It (2011)

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2011, Douglas McGrath, I Don't Know How She Does It, Kelsey Grammer, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker

Director: Douglas McGrath
Stars: Sarah Jessica Parker, Pierce Brosnan, Kelsey Grammer
Plot: Kate Reddy is a businesswoman whose friends marvel at her ability to juggle a high-flying career and a family.

Sarah Jessica Parker’s post-Sex and The City film career has been anything but varied. Not only has she starred in two poor film adaptations of the aforementioned TV show, but there’s a sense that the character she made her own, Carrie Bradshaw, is never far away. Her appearances in fluffy comedies Failure to Launch (2006) and Did You Hear About The Morgans? (2009) merely paid the bills, although The Family Stone (2005) hinted at a possible departure from her well-known character. Will I Don’t Know How She Does It finally signal a new dawn for Mrs. Broderick?

Parker stars as Kate, a woman who leads a double life. She has a difficult work/life balance that pulls her in opposite directions – a very busy businesswoman by day and an even busier mother by night and at weekends. Her husband Richard (Greg Kinnear) is getting increasingly exasperated at the amount of time Kate devotes to her career, as their love life suffers. Kate and Richard’s son Ben (Julius/Theodore Goldberg) and daughter Emily (Emma Rayne Lyle) don’t get a great deal of family time with their mother, despite Kate’s eagerness to keep up with cake-baking duties, albeit via an illicit trip to the local shop for a ready-made one. Meanwhile, an inadvertently crude instant message to business associate Jack Abelhammer (Pierce Brosnan) at first causes obvious embarrassment but eventually leads to a flirtation between the two, despite an unfortunate incident involving head lice. Kate has to re-evaluate her priorities and decide which is important – her career or her family.

I Don’t Know How She Does It, adapted from Allison Pearson’s novel of the same name, is light on plot and even lighter on substance. We follow Kate’s story which is fair enough, but her life is set so firmly in fantasy land that it’s difficult to empathise at all. As with Carrie Bradshaw’s lifestyle, the über generic job and the posh townhouse in which she lives in, make her struggles small fry compared to the rest of the real world. As a romantic comedy, it is short on both laughs and romance – there are a few semi-amusing moments, but they’re few and far between. There’s a strong hark back to the early days of Sex and the City – the first-person narration and the regular breaking-of-the-fourth-wall will be all very familiar to fans of the show, although credit to director Douglas McGrath for putting a modern twist on this technique, for example when Kate makes lists ‘on the bedroom wall’ whilst lying in bed.

In a film like this, the acting doesn’t really matter much. We’re not expecting amazing performances or anything out of the ordinary and we don’t get it. Parker fits straight into the role of Kate who is just an older, wiser version of her alter ego Carrie. Kinnear is the only one to come out with any credit, which is hardly surprising as he hasn’t got anyone to really rival him in the acting stakes. Pierce Brosnan continues to bewilder with his role choices – his Abelhammer is another classic misstep after building a solid reputation as the famous James Bond. To add insult to injury, Jack’s character development is so abysmally poor (including possibly the lamest love interest story arc ever), that it is actually easy to feel sympathy for Brosnan who is a good actor just as long as he makes the right film choices. Note to Mr. Brosnan: invest in a bin for said scripts.

I Don’t Know How She Does It is not far off being awful, but because the expectation level is so low, we’re not disappointed. This is no epiphany for Sarah Jessica Parker, but Pierce Brosnan needs to be more picky with his roles instead of playing such dreary characters.

Rating:

Review: Troll Hunter (2010)

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2010, André Øvredal, Knut Nærum, Otto Jespersen, Robert Stoltenberg, Troll Hunter

Director: André Øvredal
Stars: Otto Jespersen, Robert Stoltenberg, Knut Nærum
Plot: A group of students discover that a series of mysterious bear killings are in fact the work of a large troll, whose hunter they unexpectedly encounter.

You can probably count how many Norwegian films you’ve seen on one finger, if that. Norway’s more cinematically ambitious neighbour Sweden leads the way as the go-to Scandinavian country if you fancy two hours in the company of vampires or an obsessive computer hacker. But there’s more to the land of Edvard Grieg and A-Ha than just beautiful mountains and fjords. Norway has a low-key yet prolific movie business that has flirted with Hollywood on only one significant occasion – when Insomnia (1997) was re-made in 2002 with Al Pacino in the lead role.

Footage is found of three students, Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), Johanna (Johanna Mørck) and Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen), who are making a documentary about bear hunter Hans (Jespersen). After staking out his trailer, they eventually have the opportunity to follow him in their car through the deep forests of western Norway. As Hans disappears into the woods, the trio apprehensively trawl after him, only to be met by the hunter himself running away from a loud noise, which sounds much too loud to be a bear. A giant monster emerges from the trees – as Hans shouts “Troll!” the group retreat as fast as they can back to the road. The students find their car overturned and smashed beyond repair – Hans then offers them a ride in his Land Rover and explains that he is actually a troll hunter, using the cover of dead bears to hide his tracks.

The next day, Hans asks his newly found friends whether they believe in God. The reason being that trolls apparently have a taste for Christian blood. When they confirm that none of them do, Hans urges the three to rub themselves in troll scent so that they are undetectable by the blood-thirsty creatures. He brings out his flash-gun – a powerful weapon that emits UV-rays, turning trolls into stone, or in more extreme cases, makes them explode. Initially sceptical about Hans and his story, Kalle, Johanna and Thomas are stunned when Hans manages to coax a massive three-headed troll out into a clearing and zap it, turning it to stone. The hunter then reveals that he is not working in isolation – he is actually tracking down and killing trolls that wander out of their designated ‘territory’ on behalf of the Troll Security Service (TSS), a hush-hush government agency. As the four continue the hunt for more trolls, their encounters become increasingly fraught with danger – but will we find out what could possibly have happened to them?

Troll Hunter is essentially The Blair Witch Project (1999) meets Cloverfield (2008) and Monsters (2010) with a large helping of Lord of the Rings. In other words, it’s mostly unoriginal. The only unique aspects of the film are the Norwegian setting and the combination of hunter and novice students as the sole protagonists. There are so many ‘found footage’ films these days, that they tend to blend into each other, although the sight of trolls turning to stone will prove to be the only memorable image to be taken here. There is only so much running through trees or admiring the beautiful scenery we can do before crying out for a decent storyline to really get our teeth into – but sadly there is little to go on. You really get the sense that director André Øvredal is desperate to show the wild side of Norway in every shot, using obvious panning techniques to get in panoramic views which would be fine in a tourist video – or perhaps that’s the point.

With a relatively small budget of £2.1 million, the producers appear to have wasted a great deal of this on the poor CGI. While the trolls look spectacular in the dark, when they are exposed in the sunlight they appear to have been hastily sketched, although a major stand-off with a very large beast towards the end has some nice touches. The acting is hardly worth writing home about, but there are a few funny moments involving the eccentric Hans as he explains his very unusual job to the puzzled students. On the dramatic side, you don’t need to have a great deal of training to look shocked/tense and/or look up for 100 minutes or so – and it shows. Just like Blair Witch, don’t expect any of the cast to plough a successful international film career on the back of this – however, it’s a case of a job done but few resultant awards.

Troll Hunter has plenty of promise, but fails to deliver on an interesting trailer packed with all the best moments. If you fancy going to Norway on holiday anytime soon, then you’ll enjoy the scenery – otherwise it’s just another take on a tired sub-genre.

Rating:

Review: The Woman in Black (2012)

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2012, Ciarán Hinds, Daniel Radcliffe, James Watkins, Janet McTeer, Woman in Black

Director: James Watkins
Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Janet McTeer, Ciarán Hinds
Plot: A young solicitor is assigned to organise the estate of the late Mrs. Drablow in a remote village, but discovers the presence of a ghost who is exacting a terrifying revenge on the locals.

How does an actor shake off the spectre of a famous film franchise character? Often, no matter in which genre they might hide, there is no escaping the role that made them famous – always lingering in the background of their films and interviews. So it’s particularly fitting that Daniel Radcliffe, so well-known around the world for being the indomitable Harry Potter which, over ten years, spawned a total of eight films, here plays a man haunted by a menacing phantom. The question is: can Radcliffe exorcise the ghost of Harry while giving a convincing performance as the troubled Arthur Kipps?

The pre-credits sequence of The Woman in Black shows the fate of three unidentified sisters, who are playing with their dolls in a bedroom. They suddenly all stand up, walk towards the window and jump to their deaths – as a woman dressed in black looks on from the doorway. The plot then jumps to Edwardian London, where Arthur Kipps is on his ‘last warning’ from his employers, leaving his four-year-old son Joseph (Misha Handley) behind with his nanny. Arthur’s wife Stella (Sophie Stuckey) died shortly after childbirth – he therefore finds himself in financial difficulties and feels under pressure to support his son. He travels to Crythin Gifford, an isolated village in the English countryside (we assume somewhere near The Wash) to deal with the estate of Mrs. Alice Drablow who lived the nearby Eel Marsh House with her husband, son Nathaniel (Ashley Foster) and sister Jennet Humfrye (Liz White). Upon arrival at the local guesthouse, Kipps is initially turned away by the landlord, until his wife suggests that he stays in the attic – the same room where the earlier tragic events unfolded.

Arthur makes friends with wealthy landowner Daily (Hinds) and his wife (McTeer), whose son died in mysterious circumstances and apparently tries to communicate to Arthur through Mrs. Daily to warn him of a dangerous apparition. Kipps decides to stay at Alice Drablow’s house, contrary to the advice of the hostile inhabitants of the village to leave immediately. He keeps hearing movements upstairs, the creaking of floorboards and slamming of doors – but when he investigates there is apparently nothing or no-one there. Arthur begins to see a figure dressed in black, standing in the grounds of the house and in the windows. When he goes to the local police station to report the sighting, two boys bring their sister in, saying she has deliberately drunk lye and is desperately ill. The girl dies in Arthur’s arms and he discovers that there have been many more apparent suicides of children in the village, all blamed by the locals on ‘The Woman in Black.’

Back at the house, Kipps wades through the mountain of documents that Alice has left behind. He finds letters written by Jennet to Alice, detailing her extreme hatred towards her sister. As he reads on, it transpires that Nathaniel was actually Jennet’s son and she was deemed mentally incapable of taking care of him, so Alice raised him as her own. Everything came to a head when a carriage accident occurred involving the Drablows, during which Nathaniel drowned in the marshes but Jennet claimed Alice did nothing to save him. Such was Jennet’s despair with Alice’s betrayal and loss of her son that she hung herself in the house and whenever or whoever her ghost appears to, a child will commit suicide soon afterwards. Kipps decides that the only way Jennet will find peace will be if she is reunited with her son. He sets out with Daily’s help, to recover Nathaniel’s body and place it in Jennet’s grave, but will everything finally be resolved?

Rather harshly dubbed ‘Harry Potter and the Haunted Hallway’, The Woman in Black actually features a decent performance from Daniel Radcliffe. If you’ve never seen a Harry Potter film in your life, you’re much more likely to judge his Arthur Kipps on merit rather than against his most famous role. The looming shadow of JK Rowling’s franchise is unavoidable and many will note that Radcliffe’s boyish looks work against him, especially when we are to be convinced that he is a father. Let’s not forget though, that people in Edwardian times tended to marry quite young so this point is pretty irrelevant in this situation. Sporting token stubble and a touch of sideburns, Radcliffe delivers a performance that is the expected standard. But give him his due – it would be easy to hide behind Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman in a light-hearted Richard Curtis ensemble romantic comedy, but here he is taking a lead role in a famous horror tale whilst being subsequently exposed to the vitriol of cynical film critics.

Screenwriter Jane Goldman must been in a quandary with the well-known plot. Changing certain elements such as making Kipps a widower (in the novel he is happily married) and substituting the childrens’ tragic deaths with suicide, she has taken a big risk here and unfortunately doesn’t really pull it off. For the children of the village to turn into little subversive Damiens instead of innocent poppets at the mercy of the ‘evil ghost’ is a completely unnecessary change. However, beyond Goldman’s control is something which has puzzled many readers and audiences of the play, TV movie and this film is the reason behind the malevolent spirit’s vendetta against all children. If Jennet’s hate is purely directed towards her sister, then why do these innocents die in the name of her cause? The temptation to adapt this element of the storyline would have been forgivable, but then staying faithful to Susan Hill’s 1983 novel is the bottom line – and this is generally accomplished.

You won’t find anything original in director James Watkins’ only second British feature film after the less conventional horror, Eden Lake (2008). The resentful villagers who don’t like outsiders, foggy marshes, a creaky house and many of the other ghost film cliches are milked for all they’re worth. There’s a suspicion that a stopwatch was used in order to ensure that the scares are timed to perfection – these are so Hitchcockian (a false scare followed by a real one) that they become too predictable. There are some nice touches though, in the use of sound and suggestion, including inanimate toys becoming suddenly animate via a major close-up and a rocking chair causing a ruckus without anyone apparently sitting in it. There’s also a great atmosphere throughout using simple techniques and limited CGI – this makes a refreshing change from the tired conveyor belt of ‘found-footage’ films which really does need knocking on the head.

The Woman in Black does exactly what you expect – nothing more, nothing less. If you like a good old-fashioned ghost story, this will probably satisfy but if Daniel Radcliffe is going to convince us there is life after Potter, then this film about revenge from beyond the grave is a small step in the right direction.

Rating:

Review: The Skin I Live In (2011)

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2011, Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Jan Cornet, Pedro Almodóvar, Skin I Live In

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Stars: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Jan Cornet
Plot: A plastic surgeon develops a type of synthetic skin that doesn’t damage and tests it on a mysterious woman called Vera who he is holding captive.

You never really know what to expect from Spanish cinema, due to its ever-expanding repertoire of genres and willingness to push boundaries. As celebrated directors such as Pedro Almodóvar, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu consistently cast international stars like Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, Iberian films are far more accessible now than they have ever been. Retaining a unique, visceral style with a dash of Hollywood, The Skin I Live In is no exception – this makes Nip/Tuck look like a series of paper cuts.

Surgeon Robert Ledgard (Banderas) makes a claim to a medical conference in the Spanish town of Toledo, that he has managed to create a type of skin that doesn’t burn having only tested this on mice. Ledgard returns to his mansion, which doubles as his research centre and laboratory, where he is actually holding a woman called Vera (Anaya) captive, while using her as a guinea pig for his experiments. Also living there is housekeeper Marilia (Marisa Paredes), who is not only completely complicit in Robert’s plan to keep Vera permanently locked in her room, but has an extreme animosity towards her, to the point that she wishes Vera were dead. Robert keeps Vera under 24-hour surveillance, having cameras trained on her from the kitchen and the adjoining room for his regular admiration.

Marilia’s long-lost son Zeca (Roberto Álamo) suddenly turns up at the gates dressed in a tiger costume as he is hiding from the police after committing an armed robbery. He asks his mother to hide him for a few days whilst Robert is away, but spots Vera on the CCTV monitor, breaks into her room and rapes her. Robert comes home and shoots Zeca dead. Marilia tells her secret to Vera that Robert and Zeca are actually half-brothers and also the reason for his obsession. Twelve years earlier, his wife Gal was badly burned in a car crash and barely survived the accident. She saw her own reflection and jumped to her death out of the bedroom window, an act their daughter Norma (Blanca Suárez) witnessed. As a result, Norma was consigned to psychiatric treatment and was just starting to recover from the trauma when she was raped at a wedding reception by a young man named Vicente (Cornet). Norma commits suicide and Robert seeks terrible revenge against his daughter’s attacker. How Vera came to be a captive is revealed as we also learn how Robert visited his own inimitable style of retribution on Vicente.

The Skin I Live In is terrifically weird yet fascinating at the same time. The unusual subject matter is a million miles away from anything that Hollywood could ever dream up – this is mainly down to Pedro Almodóvar’s direction. The famed Spanish director ensures that the tightly wound script is unravelled layer by layer before the major plot twist is exposed. Investment in the characters and their motives in a movie such as this is absolutely crucial. Antonio Banderas, who we are used to seeing play the generic character of El Mariachi in various forms whether it be in Desperado (1995), Assassins (1995) or Spy Kids (2001), as Robert Ledgard is a cold, calculating power freak, whose uncontrollable fixation on his dead wife knows no bounds. Our sympathy with Ledgard is initially limited until, as each of his life’s tragedies are shown, this cynicism turns into a strange understanding for this anti-hero, despite his deeds. Banderas’ performance is pitch-perfect – without a suitably grotesque central character, there would be little to like.

Defined by some as a horror, the film’s genre is actually a voyeuristic drama with very limited amounts of gore. This is surprising given the context but with a very restrained, almost sterile style, Almodóvar has fashioned a more conventional visual interpretation, but with brilliant flashes of weirdness. The supporting cast complements Banderas, with Paredes’ tortured housekeeper being the standout. The gorgeous Anaya and Suárez as Vera and Norma respectively, are much more than just eye candy. They both bring their characters to life so well that it would be no surprise to see them follow a similar career path to the luminous Penélope Cruz – so watch this space. As far as the plot is concerned, there’s plenty to keep you intrigued right to the end, although the huge plot twist may not only be spotted a little too early, but also be too hard to swallow for some.

The Skin I Live In is a very welcome addition to the growing list of commercially successful Spanish films. A superb cast and a wickedly, almost darkly comic storyline make this well worth the effort.

Rating:

Review: Man on a Ledge (2012)

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2012, Asger Leth, Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell, Man on a Ledge, Sam Worthington

Director: Asger Leth
Stars: Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell
Plot: An escaped convict threatens to jump from the ledge outside his hotel room, but there’s more to the situation than meets the eye.

As far as blindingly obvious film titles go, Man on a Ledge has to be up there with the best (or worst) of them. Even the most highly paid screenwriters do on occasion rack their brains until the cows come home, but just can’t quite find a snappy title that somehow encapsulates a film yet keeps you guessing. Production meetings that ended with the line “It’s been a long day, let’s just call it…” have included Titanic (1997), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Three Men and a Baby (1987) and of course, the legendary Snakes on a Plane (2006). Where all of these films have lived up to expectation according to the title, Asger Leth’s film about a-bloke-standing-atop-a-building’s-concrete-shelf has a plot that is not quite as blatant as say, Alien vs. Predator (2004).

New York ex-cop-now-convict Nick Cassidy (Worthington) claims he has been framed by wealthy businessman David Englander (Ed Harris) for stealing a $40 million diamond from his vault, whilst on guard duty. He loses his final appeal and is sentenced to 25 years in jail. Nick’s father then dies so he is allowed to attend the funeral – he subsequently uses this opportunity to break free of his guards, escaping in a car which is hit by a train. He makes it out despite a large number of police on his tail. Nick checks into the Roosevelt Hotel a week later under the name of Walker. He climbs onto the ledge outside his window, gaining the attention of a passer-by who then alerts the police.

As the block is cordoned off, Nick asks the first cop on the scene, Jack Dougherty (Edward Burns) if he could talk to negotiator Lydia Mercer (Banks), who is currently on leave after failing to talk down a depressed policeman on Brooklyn Bridge. As Lydia arrives, the two begin talking, but it is only after Mercer takes a fingerprint from a cigarette, that she learns about Nick’s back story. Meanwhile, Nick’s former partner Mike Ackerman (Anthony Mackie) believes there is more going on than just a threat of suicide - he investigates what Nick has been planning and thinks that he is going to set off a bomb somewhere. Unbeknownst to the police, the press and the baying crowd below on the street, Nick’s brother Joey (Bell) and his girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) are breaking into Englander’s vault to prove Nick’s innocence.

With A Man on a Ledge, you effectively get two films for the price of one – but ends up being less than half the sum of its parts. On the one hand, we have our main protagonist Nick teetering on the edge of a ledge, stalling for time whilst fooling the conveniently attractive Lydia into thinking he’s going to jump. Then we have Joey and Angie having fun with explosives and ventilation shafts across the street, ensuring that the book of heist movie clichés has been suitably well-thumbed. The result is a film that stretches its two main plot strands far too thinly, while also forming a huge question mark over its plausibility. Are we supposed to believe that the two intrepid jewel thieves are professionals after a year of planning and no previous experience? The Ocean’s Eleven-style heist, ‘the one where the bad guy deserves to be stolen from’, has been done so many times now, it’s beyond a joke.

The only award ceremony that the cast will be bothering this year is The Razzies. Most of the acting honours go to Ed Harris, who is little more than a suited version of his Brigadier Francis X. Hummel in The Rock (1996), as he sneers and hisses his way through the rather poorly scripted character of Englander. Worst supporting actor here is James Nesbitt’s American twin Titus Welliver, who is equally as hammy and exaggerated, playing bent cop Dante Marcus. The only person coming out of this with any credit is director Asger Leth, who makes the view from the ledge in question precariously dizzying. Despite the creative camera work, the impact of Nick’s apparently inevitable suicide is tempered by the fact that we know what is happening across the road and so the potential for a big twist or a flashy finale is out of the question. It is therefore a shame that screenwriter Pablo F. Fenjves couldn’t have kept a few aces up his sleeve to surprise us and redeem himself at least a little. As it is, we are left with a pack of jokers and not a single diamond in the script, ironically.

Man on a Ledge is best enjoyed by disengaging the brain and not taking the silly plot packed with contrivances too seriously. With an interesting premise, this could have been so much more but instead we’re left with an unimaginative title – and a script to match.

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Review: The Debt (2011)

Tags

2011, Debt, Helen Mirren, John Madden, Sam Worthington, Tom Wilkinson

Director: John Madden
Stars: Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Tom Wilkinson
Plot: Three retired Mossad agents, tasked to track down and kill a Nazi war criminal in 1965, are forced to face a secret they had kept about the mission.

If you need an effective film villain to root against, an escaped Nazi war criminal is a sure-fire winner. The Odessa File (1974), Marathon Man (1976) and The Boys From Brazil (1978) played on the stereotype of the said immoral, thoroughly deplorable fugitive of the lowest order, being pursued by justice. However, The Reader (2008) showed a human side to this type of character – someone who may have just been following orders and is not necessarily complicit in their deeds. The Debt features the standard pantomime bad guy, but add in three Jews with personal vengeance on their minds and you have classic Oscar bait, surely?

In 1997, Rachel Singer (Mirren) is being honoured at a book launch by her daughter Sarah (Romi Aboulafia), who has written an account of a mission that Rachel and two Mossad colleagues Stephan Gold (Wilkinson) and David Peretz (Ciarán Hinds) undertook in 1965. This involved capturing and bringing to justice Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen) who, as the “Surgeon of Birkenau”, had carried out horrific experiments on Jews at Auschwitz. The agents had succeeded with the first part, but Rachel had to shoot him in the back after he beat her and tried escape into the night. David is taken to a waiting car from his apartment to the event, but sees Stephan in the car behind and walks in front of a lorry and is killed. Once Stephan tells Rachel what has happened, the two start to reveal that the task did not end quite as they had told their families and the press.

The action then jumps back to 1965, where Rachel (Jessica Chastain), David (Worthington) and Stephan (Marton Csokas) meet up in East Berlin to begin their assignment. David and Rachel are set up as ethnic German immigrants from Argentina, with Rachel purposefully going to a local clinic for infertility treatment so she can plant herself as a patient of Vogel who is now a gynaecologist. After a couple of visits to Vogel, the trio are given the green light to carry out their mission. Rachel injects him with a sedative and convinces his wife, who also works at the clinic, that he has suffered a heart attack. David and Stephan arrive in an ambulance to take Vogel away before the real emergency team gets there. The plan is to transfer Vogel onto a train at an abandoned station under the noses of the guards, but this goes awry and they are forced to take him back to their apartment and wait for further instructions from their employers. As time begins to run out and their relationships start to suffer, we finally discover what happened on that fateful night and what Rachel and Stephan must do to put it right.

Even a combination of Helen Mirren, obvious allusions to The Holocaust and a foray into the fascinating world of 1960s East Berlin isn’t enough to raise The Debt above your average spy thriller. One of the main problems with jumping back and forth between time periods whilst linking in the same characters played by different actors and actresses, is that each role needs to convince as being the same person. Chastain and Mirren who both play Rachel, are the most obvious to believe not just by being the only female, but because you get the same sense of vulnerability and determination from both actresses. Unfortunately, as far as the characters of David and Stephan are concerned, many will have trouble trying to reconcile Hinds’ performance with Worthington’s as much as Wilkinson’s and Csokas’. This is a real shame as we expect much more from a cast such as this, yet it’s difficult to decide who is to blame for this oversight.

Director John Madden, who has been at the helm of a variety of films such as Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (2001), offers up a rather bland interpretation of the 1997 storyline – the film only comes alive when we are transported back to the 1960s and it shows that Madden is most comfortable with those particular scenes. Writers Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan should really have given us a more coherent plot and convincing characters to empathise with. Dieter Vogel’s character is dastardly enough – Christensen plays him with the right amount of mocking remorselessness – but the ending is frustratingly unsatisfying and could really have done with a lot more punch. For all its flaws though, the film has its heart in the right place, but lacks the cutting edge that would make it far more memorable.

There’s a fantastic story in here somewhere, but The Debt fails to do justice to a storyline which should be tailor-made for a moving, emotional journey. Instead, all it gets is a nonchalant shrug.

Rating:

Review: Melancholia (2011)

Tags

2011, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Kirsten Dunst, Lars von Trier, Melancholia

Director: Lars von Trier
Stars: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Keifer Sutherland
Plot: As the planet Melancholia heads towards a crash-course with Earth, a wedding reception exposes family tensions.

In cinematic terms, when Earth is faced with a potentially fatal collision with a fast-moving extraterrestrial body, we send either Bruce Willis or Robert Duvall into space with a drill to sort out the problem. In 1998, America saved the world not once but twice in Armageddon and Deep Impact, in the most unsubtle of ways. Fast forward thirteen years later and Lars von Trier’s concept of our planet’s end of days is firmly at the other extreme. Melancholia is a very downbeat affair which involves no spacecraft or Aerosmith – this is an idea borne out of a depressive episode which he experienced, where calm is felt during stressful situations.

Despite the film’s title, the introduction of the lead characters (following a short, scenic celestial tour and a bizarre slow-motion sequence) of Melancholia is anything but. Newly married couple Justine (Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) are late for their wedding reception due to the fact that their limo driver has trouble (to much hilarity) negotiating his way there. Unfortunately their tardiness doesn’t go down well with Justine’s sister Claire (Gainsbourg) or her brother-in-law John (Sutherland) who have spent a lot of money on the party at their mansion. Family relationships are further strained by the presence of the sisters’ divorced parents Dexter (John Hurt) and Gaby (Charlotte Rampling), who insist on sniping at each other throughout the speeches. As the celebrations continue in full swing, we notice that Justine’s behaviour becomes increasingly erratic – she sneaks off on her own for a nap and later has a bath just before the cake-cutting duty commences.

Justine’s boss Michael (Stellan Skarsgård) keeps pestering her to write advertising copy, which she finds irritating and is driven to the end of her tether, effectively raping a guest on the golf course. All of these conflicts start to send Justine over the edge and she becomes severely depressed to the point that guests start leaving early and Michael feels he can’t manage his new wife and leaves her. Meanwhile in the sky, a massive telluric planet named Melancholia is approaching Earth but has been predicted to pass by and carry its journey onwards, out of our solar system. Justine notices that certain stars in the sky have ‘disappeared’ but is reassured by John, an amateur astronomer, that this is normal as the planet eclipses other stars. As the fall-out from the wedding reception manifests itself in Justine’s demeanour, Claire starts to worry if Melancholia will actually hit the Earth, contrary to the scientists’ predictions.

There will be inevitable comparisons drawn between Melancholia and Terence Malick’s Tree of Life due to their dual space/earth subplots, although it makes much more sense here as the inter-stellar voyage doesn’t interrupt the terrestrial goings-on. Considering the film’s title, introduction and tone, you would think that pretension would seep in far too often. There is surprisingly little obscurity to speak of – once the events at the wedding party begin to unfold and Justine’s psyche begins to unravel, the plot is straightforward enough to follow. The fraught relationship between the sisters played by Dunst and Gainsbourg takes up most of the screen time and the two actresses do a terrific job, despite no-one seeming to question why Justine has an American accent in an English family.

Melancholia has an all-star supporting cast who play their characters beautifully. Veterans Hurt, Rampling and Stellan Skarsgård interact extremely well with their younger counterparts including Alexander Skarsgård and Sutherland to create very convincing dynamics, drawing you into their individual stories. As soundtracks go, we must assume that it is one of the shortest ever, consisting of merely one classical piece. Using the prelude to Richard Wagner’s opera Trist and Isolde, not just in the opening sequences but throughout the film, at first feels very apt but becomes tired after a while. Perhaps it would have been wiser for von Trier to alternate the music a little, instead of bombarding us with Wagner every other scene. However, the music links in well as the planet looms large and passes by in some of the most gorgeous cinematography ever conceived.

Melancholia will not be to everyone’s taste, certainly among those who will find the dark mood a little too much. But Lars von Trier has given us a very profound, original and thought-provoking film which may in time be viewed as a masterpiece, but not just yet.

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