Review: Serena

Hollywood is fundamentally built on money, which helps to explain why trends occur: studios will seek to cash in on the success of certain films, genres and topics by releasing their own versions. It was only a couple of weeks ago that Gone Girl was released, about a flawed man brought to his knees by a disturbed, murderous wife, and now we have Serena, about exactly the same thing.

Set in the North Carolina forests just after the Wall Street Crash, Serena tells the story of one George Pemberton (Bradley Cooper), a logging tycoon trying to forge a lumber empire in straightened times. He soon meets the beguiling Serena soon-to-be Pemberton (Jennifer Lawrence), a disturbed young woman whose family were killed in a fire when she was 12. They marry, dedicate themselves to the lumberjacking and each other, and all is well.

No prizes for guessing that soon things go a little wrong, with George’s right-hand man threatening to betray them to the law. There’s death, romance and betrayal in the clear mountain air.

One of the main problems with Serena, an enjoyable but shallow affair, is that it is confused about what it is. The plot changes at the tiniest coincidence, people switch allegiances for unrealistic reasons, and the flimsiest pretences turn the film on its head. You think that you are watching one thing, only to realise that it’s another now, and you just don’t care.

Another major drawback is how the film is stuffed with easy symbolism. An analysis of its themes would reads like a school essay on American literature: the quest for the American Dream; the brutality of the frontier; man versus nature. Serena imports an eagle, taming it and teaching it to catch the snakes which are attacking the loggers. It soars above the action, gleaming in its golden United States pride. Yes, we get it. From the first scene to the last, there is a hunt for a local panther. Every so often, George leaves the action to stalk this elusive beast, drawn further into the wilderness which, one suspects, might overpower him. Again, we are insulted by the obviousness of these metaphors being stuffed down our throats.

As others have pointed out, Serena was filmed a couple of years ago. Since then, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence have starred in two critically acclaimed films, and in all likelihood this was edited to promote their time on-screen together. As a result, the fabulous supporting cast are woefully underused. Toby Jones, for example, is a righteous local sheriff who joins the action only when totally necessary. Characters disappear as suddenly as they appear. Rhys Ifans is an enjoyable watch as the brooding psycho mountain man, a mix of Bill Sykes and Anton Chigurh, and in my mind the Welshman plays it with a lot more depth than Bradley Cooper manages.

The relationship between Serena and George, then, is an important one. It forms the backbone of the film more than individuals or plot. But the problem is that there just isn’t enough in that element to support the whole movie. Lawrence has been given a meaty role, in which she thrives, but Cooper hasn’t. The outcome is a flat shadow of Silver Linings Playbook. There are whispers of Macbeth in their marriage, but that is to do an enormous disservice to the play. What a shame – truly a wasted opportunity. 

The filmmakers could certainly have improved the final product by keeping the action within the claustrophobic logging village, which would allow for a focus that is lacking. Instead of a Macbeth style tragedy, we have a rambling and vague story which just fizzles into nothing. There is no edge, no real soul. So, while Serena is nicely shot and perfectly entertaining, it is a film that will likely soon be forgotten.

Review: Gone Girl

Nick Dunne returns home on his fifth wedding anniversary to find a smashed table and a missing wife. I can't really say much more than that, otherwise the twisting plot of Gone Girl, David Fincher's new thriller, would be completely given away. Suffice to say it involves the disappearance of a woman and the subsequent investigation, and the slow shift of suspicion falling onto her husband. What has happened? Is Nick guilty of murdering Amy? Who to root for, and which of the two versions of events to believe, is at the heart of this tale of distorted reality.

Nick is a reasonably dislikeable man. He's smug, he's boring, he's selfish. But he forms an ostensibly perfect couple with Amy, fellow journalist and inspiration for her parents' best-selling series of saccharine children's novels Amazing Amy. 'We're so cute,' Amy muses prophetically 'that I want to punch us in the face.' Well, after the two lose their jobs in the recession and Nick forces a move back to his small Southern hometown, that punching pretty much becomes a reality. The marriage disintegrates, Nick has an affair and Amy goes missing.

Gone Girl is an odd blend of genres. Whilst ostensibly a thriller, with psychological and emotional questions at the heart, elements of comedy creep in with increasing frequency. The result is that you feel like you are dancing around evil with a perverted grin. There is much satire also, about the nature of celebrity and the role of the press and all that. Thankfully, this never becomes too obvious, avoiding the easy clichés. It also seems as if Gone Girl will turn into a standard police procedural, but this element slowly fizzles out. What you are left with is an idiosyncratic style that knocks the viewer off balance. ‘What did we just watch?’ is, I suspect, a common reaction.

Gone Girl has been adapted from a best-selling book by the author herself, and the writing is undeniably tight. However, it should be pointed out that what really brings the words to a four star production is the acting. At one point mocked and maligned more than anyone on earth, Ben Affleck is obviously well-suited to playing Nick, ‘the most hated man in America’. He captures the banal, reasonably flawed everyman of Nick Dunne, treading the line between sympathetic guy-next-door and pathetic adulterer. Carrie Coon is sturdy as his feisty twin; Kim Dickens is spirited as the Fargo-esque cop; Tyler Perry is greasily amusing as Tanner Bolt, the celebrity wife-killer defence lawyer; and Neil Patrick Harris is superbly comic as the excessively neat weirdo ex-boyfriend of Amy.

However, Rosamund Pike is in a league of her own. Her cool, focused face is that of the archetypal sociopathic femme fatale. She can switch from one person to another, from good to evil, so powerfully yet with the minimal of physical changes. Watching her makes you wonder why she hasn't been in more since Die Another Day, but perhaps now she will be – a true slow-burner.

Gone Girl is further enhanced by its visual style. All due praise should be heaped on those who had a hand in the filmography. Capturing the precarious world of this McMansion suburbia is achieved through an incredibly measured, precise view of it all. It is like watching the surface of a pond on a windless day. Clear, bright lighting bathes the clean counters, large homes, spotless SUVs. The still feel that is evoked gives the creepy feel of the small town and happy couple whose superficial perfection belies serious problems. It also mirrors Amy’s icy plotting. 

Gone Girl seems to be asking what is behind suburban charm and superficial perfection, something which is not a novel concept. But that reading is deceptively reductive. On a higher level, Gone Girl asks us about what we really understand of the people we think we know, and when in life does illusion take over? Gone Girl should be viewed again and again to peel back the layers of artifice and really get to the bottom of its themes. Fittingly, it feels almost like you haven't really understood what it's about, probably because you're being lied to all the time. There has been a lot of talk about its true meaning, and it seems as if the trickery of Amy and, to a lesser extent, Nick is also evidenced by writer Gillian Flynn and director David Fincher. I would not say that Gone Girl is really any kind of a social satire. So what is it really? Just call it a thriller and enjoy the experience.

Review: Magic in the Moonlight

It feels like it was only last week that audiences were passionately praising Blue Jasmine, and here we have another jazz-driven Woody Allen rom-com to tuck into. Maybe he should slow down a little, choose his projects a little more wisely, and that way be ensured that every release receives the rapture of Blue Jasmine. This time, we follow Colin 'tortured gent' Firth as Stanley Crawford, a misanthropic magician who loves nothing more than debunking spirit mediums and séances. Crawford stomps around, crushing anyone who believes in other dimensions because he's a bit of pathetic misery guts. After a successful tour, an old friend lures him to an aristocratic abode which is currently entertaining a young mystic. Sophie Barker (Emma Stone) captivates him, and the two avenues that this film can explore are by now fairly obvious: 1) Is she for real? 2) Will Crawford and Barker get together? Hilarity ensues.

Magic in the Moonlight is whimsical and feel good, with the now-standard jovial jazz soundtrack melting over the saccharine story. This is what Allen does so well - he presents the inexplicable facets of love (often impossible or problematised love) with a deftness and lightness of touch that any master magician would be proud of. This results in movies that are so easy to watch that you can almost feel the intelligence being slipped past unnoticed. Having said that, don't expect anything particularly profound. The driving philosophy seems to be 'yeah, love's great, it can't be explained, even rational science types need to embrace the reckless unknown sometimes.'

And yes, Allen's insatiable thirst for the Old World continues. Gone are the serious intellectual characters of Annie Hall or Manhattan, with their cardigans and earnest neuroticism, instead replaced by slick, bouncing worlds in genteel Europe. This time it is the South of France, although I think that he was unable to resist a Cabaret homage with the first scene being set in a Weimar-era Berlin nightclub. The 1920s also affords him the colourful sartorial glamour which Gatsby films use to such great effect.

The pairing of Colin Firth, established actor and affable English gent, with the younger Emma Stone, who made a name for herself in the drunken teenage masterpiece of a comedy Superbad, seems unorthodox. Then again, the protagonists in Midnight in Paris weren't even from the same historical period. It works pretty well, though - no Bogart and Bacall but perfectly believable. I would say, however, that Firth is weak in comparison with his past performances. Maybe that is because he is playing the nihilistic misanthrope too well, but he just seemed a little... annoying. His outbursts seem contrived and his speeches are boring.

Ultimately, Magic in the Moonlight is nothing to write home about, but it's profitable business as usual. Allen delivers because he's so well-practiced at the rom-com that it would be hard to fail. There are some laughs, a tight plot and a nice musing on love and life. Put Magic in the Moonlight in the same category as To Rome With Love and you'll be happy enough to see it.

'I see... a poor choice of headgear...'