The Drop Review

A couple of years ago I reluctantly reviewed Bullhead, a Flemish-language film about abuses within the rural Belgian meat trade. I was surprised with what I saw, however. It was a nauseatingly brutal, engaging film, so violent in one part that I thought I was going to be sick. The director, Michael R. Roskam, must have impressed higher forces than me, because he was subsequently offered a big-hitting Hollywood crime drama with two huge stars. The result is The Drop, a New York underworld tale of money and murder.

The location is Brooklyn, in a run-down neighbourhood once run by Cousin Marv. The hulking bruiser of an American is played by James Gandolfini, of Sopranos fame, in what was his final film before a fatal heart attack. All the brooding, bastard thuggery that Gandolfini became so well known for is present in Marv. A decade earlier, some Chechen chaps muscled in, Marv ‘blinked first’, and the Eastern gangsters took over. Now he has to content himself with running a bar he once owned (originally called Cousin Marv’s), a location for criminals to store and collect their dirty money.

Tom Hardy is Bob Saginowski, a taciturn relative of Marv’s who tends the bar and keeps out of trouble. However, trouble comes to him in two ways: first, when he finds an injured dog in a bin and forms a relationship with the owner of the bin, Nadia (Noomi Rapace). Her ex-boyfriend (played by Matthias Shoenaerts, start of Bullhead) is a lunatic with a violent past who then stalks and intimidates Bob. Second, the bar is held up by a couple of small time thugs, and the Chechens want their money back. The police also become interested. The various happenings threaten to take Bob down, but is there more to him than meets the eye?

As New York based gangster films are want to do, religious motifs pop up time and again. Bob and the detective investigating the shady goings on are both devotees of the local Catholic church. So enters the redemption theme. In the face of unrelenting criminality, Bob is obviously trying to do some good. His care for the dog allows him to put his religious sentiments into practice, for until now he did not even take communion.

It is also a film rampant in all-American masculinity - just look at the three top-billed actors and their reputations. It seems as if the gangster genre really is an update of the Western, and Hardy is every bit The Man With No Name.

The Drop stems from a short story by one Dennis Lehane, who then scripted the film. I can see how the story would work well in novella form or even as a brief play – it has the brief, intimate examination of a section of life that is perhaps too cosy for a big blockbuster. Considering the names at the top of the billing, the story isn’t as complex as presented. Pairing of actors to provide an unyielding masculinity to the gritty, Brooklyn scene.

Review: Fury

Fury is a tale of two halves. The first is a distressingly uncompromising, complex look at conflict. The second is an entertaining but empty Hollywood war flick.

Action man Brad Pitt is tank ace staff sergeant Don ‘Wardaddy’ Collier, a grizzled veteran of the fighting in North Africa and Europe. In the first scene we see him brutally ambush a German soldier on horseback, stabbing him in the face or something equally distasteful. Then we see him tenderly pet the white horse, sending it on its way with affection. (Hitler was of course fond of animals but less keen on humans. I don’t know why maniacal nutters are often that way.) He commands the tank ‘Fury’, which has survived for so long partly due to Collier’s commanding skill and partly due to luck. He has thus far managed to uphold his promise to keep his crew safe.

The crew consists of chubby Mexican ‘Gordo’ (Michael Pena), hefty hillbilly ‘Coon-Ass’ (Jon Bernthal) and religious zealot ‘Bible’ (Shia LeBeouf). They’re equally jaded, oscillating between pious disgust at war and blood lust. When their gunner is killed (‘the best goddamn gunner in the Second Division’ or something like that), rooky army typist Norman (Logan Lerman) is sent as a replacement. As is imaginable, the battle-hardened crew give him a hard time, and Norman finds its difficult to shoot down Hitler Youth conscripts.

The environment that Fury creates is impressive. There is dirt everywhere – clothes, skin, ground, vehicles... they all have a pervasive mud and grime clinging to them. The soundtrack helps with the immersive feeling, not as in music but as in the sounds of war. There is an almost constant barrage of rumblings, gunfire, explosions and belching tank noise. In the tank itself we hear incessant clinking of metal, the tracks beneath whirring and the shells whizzing overhead. The screams and shouts of the crew just about cut through the ceaseless soundtrack of destruction: as a viewer, the feeling is one of submersion in total war, as much as that is possible in the safety of a cinema. The interior tank shots are plentiful enough to convey the claustrophobia and danger of tank warfare. If one of the objectives of Fury is to transport us into this type of enclosed, metallic combat, then Pitt and co. have succeeded magnificently.

The other thing that Fury does so well is to portray the complexities of war. Collier is not a righteous man: he shoots a prisoner of war where Tom Hanks’ officer protected one from mob justice in Saving Private Ryan. At yet at the same time he is fighting Nazism. At the heart of Fury is the examination of reality versus morality, ethics thought up in safety conflicting with the actuality of having to implement those ethics on the battlefield. What price is worth paying? To what degree can idealists keep their dignity and sense of right in the muddle of war? Fury’s war is not one of glory of righteousness, but child soldiers, murder and ceaseless slaughter. One particularly uncomfortable scene shows the horrors of wartime rape, with the audience having to see a post-battle town through the eyes of two terrified young women.

Filming and soundtrack aside, Fury brings war to life well by colouring its soldiers through superb acting. Pitt manages to portray the classic American army hero without resorting the simplicity: the nihilistic, brutalised soldier has clearly lost his soul somewhere back on the road. LeBeouf is often in the news for being a prat, but no one can deny his abilities. Bernthal really made me hate Coon-Ass in all his muscular chauvinism.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers decided that a spectacular final showdown was in order. When Fury is hit by a mine at an important crossroads, static and without working radio, the plucky Yanks find themselves in the path of an oncoming SS battalion. It’s always an SS battalion, as if an average army outfit would be too easy to defeat, and not nearly evil enough. Their last stand is hopelessly unrealistic, predictable down to the finest detail. The German soldiers are not skilled killers, masters of war who have honed their fighting abilities on the Eastern Front. Rather, they are clueless buffoons, running about with no sense of tactics. Only after dozens of them are killed does the camp, cowardly officer decide to abandon his policy of getting his men to charge straight at the armoured vehicle and instead crack out the anti-tank weapons. They are all hopeless shots, especially compared to the ace gunner Norman, who is now a skilful warrior, having been fighting for about two days. Hollywood often seems to forget that the Wehrmacht was an immense fighting machine, and unfortunately it took more than a few Brad Pitts to defeat it.

So Fury is doubtless highly gripping from start to finish, over two hours later. But the intelligent look at war in its muddled brutality, morality versus reality and man’s violent, nihilistic abilities is all in the first half; the second lets it down.

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...'

Review: A Most Wanted Man

With this being the last leading role of the late Philip Seymour-Hoffman, A Most Wanted Man was carrying the weight of expectation. There was also a danger that it would be received as just that: Seymour-Hoffman’s final starring performance, and thus celebrated regardless of its quality. Thankfully, the finished article is worthy of praise both for the actor’s efforts and its own genuine merit.

Hamburg: the present day. 9/11 is still fresh in the minds of the security services, whose petty rivalries and bungling incompetence allowed the Twin Towers attack to be planned in the German port town at the beginning of the century. Between unwelcome American spooks and humourless German secret service officials we follow Günther Bachmann. Günther (Seymour-Hoffman) is part of a small espionage team that cultivates informants from within the nation’s Muslim community. They start from the bottom up, as Günther tells us that it takes a minnow to catch a barracuda and a barracuda to catch a shark. The plot revolves around Günther’s plan to follow a recently arrived Chechen terrorist to ensnare a businessman suspected of funnelling charity funds to militant groups. Günther’s Western rivals have different plans.

All eyes are doubtless of Philip Seymour-Hoffman, who was so critically celebrated in life and whose death this year shocked. He masterfully controls the screen without dominating. His typical brooding presence is not the braggadocio flurry of DiCaprio or the flamboyant madness of Nicholson, rather a realist series of flinches and shuffles which carry piercing eyes so full of gravitas. This translates as an extraordinary ‘watchability’, an unexplainable X factor on-screen. His Günther is depressed, anonymous, a chain-smoker who perhaps is fond of the piano. That and whiskey (or whisky, I didn’t see the national derivation of his brands I’m afraid). His old overcoat shabbily covers a man who soldiers on in a work environment so full of evil and madness despite the personal consequences. Frankly, I cannot see DiCaprio or Nicholson carrying it off – think of Oldman as Smiley but more at home in a greasy kebab shop.

Adapted from a John Le Carré novel, AMWM is largely what you would expect. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy comparisons are wholly appropriate. It is slow, contemplative, the grey apartment buildings of Hamburg matching the grey stubble-flecked face of bloated Günther (Günther seems a perfect name for a fat man for some reason). Locations are old postwar blocks, grimy wooden bars and bare bunkers for housing grabbed suspects. The cinematography supports the setting: functional, washed, still. The story is one where only the most necessary of details are explained, but the plot is actually fairly simple in case you are afraid of having to join too many dots. I can imagine it working even better as a book: in film format, I almost wondered what it was trying to say.

The overall sense, therefore, is that of cynical nihilism. The pointlessness is pervading, the utter futility of this century’s Great Game hammered home visually, thematically and atmospherically. It definitely intends to question what our secret services get up to, and whether the ends justify the means, but goes one step further and asks what are the ends anyway? Common tropes of the espionage genre are present, and maybe this is an updated Spy Who Came in from the Cold. If you are a fan of the James Bond end of spy films and detest the boring Carré style, then avoid AMWM. But if you’re not an idiot, book a ticket now.

SPOILER ALERT: The ending distinctly resembles that of Monty Python’s Holy Grail, where a few coppers jump out of a squad car and arrest King Arthur for murder as he leads the charge on a French castle. This finale is not, unfortunately, quite as witty or anarchic, although similarly subversive.

Review: Lucy

Filmic Frenchman Luc Bresson has had a prolific career, output-wise. This year alone he is involved with three films. The only one which he has directed, as well as written and produced, is Lucy, a sci-fi action-thriller which seeks to say more than it does.

American expat Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is coerced by her cowboy hat wearing douchebag of a boyfriend into delivering a mysterious briefcase to an even more mysterious Mr. Jang. Mr. Jang, you will not be surprised to hear, is an organised crime boss in Taiwan. The briefcase, you will be even less surprised to hear, contains drugs. Our naive Western protagonist soon finds herself thrown into the heart of the city’s underworld, beaten by Mr. Jang’s overfed henchman (always impeccably dressed, though – somehow their victims’ blood only ever splashes on their faces, hands and cuffs, never touches the suits) and taken captive.

All the while, we watch a scene from a Parisian university. Morgan Freeman, in another role which epitomises sage (the possession of wisdom not the herb), delivers a lecture in human brain capacity. This professor Norman explains that we only use about ten percent of our brains, and theorises as to what would happen if it were to increase.

And then, just when Lucy didn’t think that her day could get any worse (she was well behind with her exam revision by this point), the sharkskin-wearing Al Capone of Taipei decides that she is to be a drug mule for a new narcotic. During captivity, however, she is kicked, releasing some of the CPH4 drug which has been stitched into her stomach. The effect that this has is to increase Lucy’s brain power – in 24 hours she will be operating at one hundred percent. Lucy gets mad. She kills a load of baddies, gets the drugs removed and flies to Europe to speak with Norman and get a hold of this crazy situation. Mr. Jang becomes decidedly disgruntled.

The story is obviously absurd. These days film executives seem to think that to make sci-fi more realistic for the audience, they must throw in some cod science rationalising the preposterous plot. Thus we have the professor character explaining, in terms that your average viewer will understand despite not possessing advanced scientific qualifications, that it is perfectly possible to fly or time travel or become a fish. The whole ‘we only use ten percent of our brain’ statement is deeply flawed (or so Wikipedia informs me), but because Lucy doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously I don’t begrudge the mumbo jumbo particularly. I do think, though, that by reining in the ridiculousness Besson could have said something interesting. As it is, the bits that make you pause to consider life and all that come very early on. Norman’s lecture takes us through human history and what we do with intelligence (‘we seem more concerned with having than being’), which is all pretty profound.

At the beginning Lucy’s plot is interspersed with narration from Norman and clips of events in nature. This mix of contemporary storyline, warm Freeman musings and National Geographic stock footage provides an unexpected and novel style. A riveting caper of a plot with philosophical thought about the nature of existence sure sounds good. However, Lucy descends into a smorgasbord of high-octane action sequences. It was all balanced so well initially, but the filmmakers simply abandoned the idiosyncratic montages in favour of cheap thrills. As the David Attenborough bits fall away we just watch martial arts in Asian prisons, car chases etc. The overblown shootouts, piles of bodies and characters being blasted around rooms by CGI force fields are straight out of a Summer blockbuster textbook.

Both Morgan Freeman and Scarlett Johansson are expected to pull off stellar performances, and so it is easy to overlook how well they go about their acting. It’s business as usual for Freeman – you know what to expect, and he delivers no less. But Johansson provides that emotional charge which takes a scene from stuff happening to stuff happening that we invest our emotions in. Her journey from terrified victim to ruthless survivor is worn like a mask on her face. Angelina Jolie was apparently the first choice, and I think that Lucy is improved immeasurably by an actor who can seem like a real human in these situations rather than a cardboard action figure. Choi-Mink Sik (Mr. Jang) has the necessary blend of urbane businessman and lunatic warlord, and looks a bit like a Korean Gary Oldman. Can’t say whether that was intentional or not. 

People have cited 2001, Inception and Leon (which starred the Gary Oldman featured in the above paragraph) when discussing Lucy. It is miles off those films in terms of intelligence, originality and entertainment. It feels like a waste of a promising spark of inspiration. Nonetheless there are some interesting scenes enhanced by captivating acting. The fundamental idea underpinning Lucy is how humans are evolving and where life will be long after we have gone. This gets you thinking about more than your immediate situation, as greater aspects of existence are highlighted for a couple of hours. It is incidentally this ability to transport you to a different place that makes cinema so powerful in the first place.

Review: The Two Faces of January

The most appropriate description of The Two Faces of January is 'stylish': that is its main selling point. Set in 1960s Greece, affluent Americans stroll around as if in a Mad Men holiday. The suspiciously well-dressed local peasantry smoke by Ancient ruins and crumbling tavernas, Hollywood's beautiful exports languidly milling about in bespoke linen. Cinematographer Marcel Zyskind deserves praise for his handling of these scenes, which capture the sun soaked environment with overexposed precision. Istanbul is used, as always, for its winding Ottoman alleyways that allow our Western heroes to be chased by moustachiod baddies.

Oscar Isaac, enjoying a career boost since Inside Llewin Davis, is Jersey-born Rydal, a tour guide who performs petty swindles and scams in central Athens. He ends up performing both these services for a wealthy American couple, comprising the mean, mysterious money-shifting Chester McFarland (Viggo Mortensen) and his young, pleasant wife Colette (Kirsten Dunst). However, a private detective shows up and informs Chester, and us, that some people who Chester defrauded back in the States are not happy. Chester accidentally kills him, Rydal helps out, and the trio are forced on the run in Hitchcockian fashion. Chester must also stop his marriage failing with the entrance of the young upstart.

The posters all declare that The Two Faces of January is brought to you by the producers of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, so you would expect that the plot would twist and turn, beguiling the viewer and forcing deep thought. But it doesn't. The events described above pretty much cover it - the chase goes on, the odd thing happens, it ends. The intelligence of TTSS, turned in on itself in knots, is entirely absent. The characters are established as shady, but are never explored, meaning that the figures on-screen are simply two dimensional stock types: swindling businessman, roguish young con artist, pretty woman. The police that follow them are just uniforms, the private investigator a flat imitation of Marlowe or Spade. The posters also declare that it's from the same novelist as The Talented Mr. Ripley and adapted by the same screenwriter as Drive. Again, bold comparisons that show just how shallow The Two Faces of January is. They are all stylish, sure, but TTFOJ is not nearly as pensive, profound or dangerous. It seems almost as if it was cobbled together as a re-hash of past glories for the pay cheque. The Mediterranean setting and sinister, plotting characters from The Talented Mr. Ripley are there, but the bubbling menace is absent.

Similarly, some themes are touched on, then left entirely. Deception, for example. Rydal mentions that he was a Yale man, which Chester doubts, but we never find out who is right. The trio circle each other in the paranoid, hot atmosphere, yet never seem to uncover personal secrets. Rydal's father is constantly mentioned, having just died, their dysfunctional relationship brought up in conversations that threaten to go somewhere. But again, nothing is made of it - it turns out Rydal just didn't really like his dad, and that's that. The actors all perform well, but without much depth to their roles they cannot take it anywhere . It leaves you wondering what the point of the whole thing is.

The chase has been a cinematic trope almost since the invention of the motion picture. Hitchcock got a lot out of them. This is what The Two Faces of January is built upon. Combine this with the visuals and it's perfectly enjoyable. A crime caper with pantomime villains, textbook tension scenes and an HD colour palate, The Two Faces of January is a worthy triumph of style over substance.

Review: Locke

The charismatically-named Ivan Locke (perhaps more suited to a medieval warlord) gets into his BMW and starts driving. He doesn’t leave the car for the rest of the film, nor do any other characters appear physically. Instead, all the action of Locke unfolds over the phone. Welsh builder Ivan is in the middle of a personal crisis, which also affects his professional life, and throws out instructions telephonically during a nocturnal commute to London. The tale doesn’t tell whether he has a forgiving mobile package. As scant as that information is, any more would tamper with the experience. The teasing out of information, and Locke’s attempts to fix everything, are the central premise of Steven Knight's latest production.

Wearing a country gent’s shirt more suited to Nigel Farage than a builder, Tom Hardy is predictably the central attraction of the show. Without an actor able to blend realism and force of personality, Locke would have flopped. Many of Hardy’s characters have thus far been extroverted, boldly charismatic and brashly noticeable. This was the opposite, almost as if Hardy wanted to prove that he could act in the Bogart school of understated expressions. The stress and mental strains start to seep through the concrete expression of calm collection as the evening wears on. What seems random is Ivan’s thick Welsh accent. Why? What was the point? Maybe Hardy was so used to silly accents from Batman that he couldn’t act without one. Not being a Welshman myself I am unable to say how good it was, but I did think that at moments it bordered on Indian. Either way, it was an inexplicable linguistic insertion. Nonetheless, Hardy proved yet again why he is a constant critical success, driving the plot as easily as the BMW.

Ivan is a builder, more specifically a concrete specialist. It is understood that he is the best in the business, always ahead of paperwork and running a tight ship. But the night before the biggest concrete pour in Europe (outside of military nuclear works, we are told), he absconds to deal with bigger issues. His bosses are furious, but Ivan tries to manage it all from his car. His adherence to building with concrete borders on the obsessional, so the professional side of the story is a way of showing how this controlling man tries to deal with messy life. Ivan acts in such a rigid fashion to avoid being like his father, yet has ended up in a very similar position. Is this because the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree, or that life is not as controllable as concrete? There is no formula for love or happiness. Ivan is essentially a decent man, but a moment of weakness has left him unable to un-hurt those closest to him.

Locke has been described in some quarters as a thriller. But it doesn’t rely on twists, so cannot really be described as a thriller per se. Instead, it is a character study, seemingly more suited to the theatre than cinema. It has been written so tightly and acted so superbly that it is elevated from simply a commute down the M40 (without even stops at periodic Little Chefs) to a tense personal voyage. Whilst not nail biting, as some have suggested, Locke is delightfully claustrophobic. Whereas a film usually pulls away from a location after a while, viewers are forced to remain in the car with Ivan’s strifes mounting. The petty annoyances of having to contact a council official busy in a curry house and memorise mobile numbers niggle at the audience. On top of that is the major familial plot, which lifts the enterprise into film-worthy levels.

Perhaps Locke is a comment on the state of modern man. The existentialist crises that face our society's young chaps are reflected in Ivan: having to act like a man but feeling like they are being blamed for it; taking responsibility and doing the right thing even though that will be condemnation; the negatives of masculinity without the positives. Certainly Locke echoes the thoughts of If-, about (if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you), a twenty-first century act of stoicism because, as Ivan repeats, 'it is the right thing to do'. With this in mind I would imagine it to be a film more suited to men than women. But maybe I'm wrong.

While the shooting style is fairly minimal, there is room for quite a few expressionistic out-of-focus shots of streetlights and car bonnets. The angles shift from one side of the vehicle to another, and bursts of lyricless music stimulate a feeling of stifling doom. Although not always a comfortable watch, Locke is gripping, compelling, and all those other descriptions a psychological semi-thriller should be.

Hardy does 'stressed'

Review: Calvary

Calvary is an Irish black comedy from filmmaker John Michael McDonagh. It tells the story of Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson), a priest in rural Sligo who is dismissed or abused by most of the troubled locals despite being an exemplary moral force. His routine is brought to a violent standstill when an unseen villager announces, during confession, that he will kill Lavelle in a week. The anonymous man was abused as a child by a clergyman, and he has chosen an innocent replacement to pay because it will be all the more shocking. Over the next week, we watch Lavelle try to make sense of it all in his troubled parish.

The setting is importantly modern Ireland: society in the grips of a choking recession whilst simultaneously shedding its Catholic bearings. The characters all struggle with everyday spiritual questions without organised religion acting as the main moral force. People look to money, drugs, drink and other instant vices to provide comfort against a carefully-shot backdrop of green mountains and crumbling white cottages. Despite the rural locale, it is a place where there is open disrespect toward priests, immigration (albeit minimal) and juvenile serial killers. I suspect that this national introspection was a main concern of McDonagh's.

Various nefarious locals exude auras of ill-intent, a la most films set in the countryside, with a Celtic undertone that’s reminiscent of The Wicker Man. We have a pseudo-aristocratic former banker, a sadistic doctor, a brooding African mechanic, a masochistic adulterer, an angry ex-copper and more. Gleeson must be lavishly praised for his performance. The cast is superb (IT Crowd dork Christ O’Dowd in particular), but it is the burly lead who so subtly captures a man in turmoil. His cracked, sympathetic facial expressions single him out amongst the rest, who struggle unsuccessfully to combat their own problems. They are often framed awkwardly, either threateningly dominating the screen or perched lurking in the corners.

I suspect that the film is stuffed full of religious references and theological thoughts, and that the more you watch it the more you uncover. Certainly many of the seven deadly sins are displayed by the villagers, from gluttony (boozing and drug-taking) to lust (cardinal preoccupation) to wrath (murder). The title refers to Christ’s crucifixion location, but is Lavelle as ready to sacrifice himself in the midst of taunting sinners? To its great credit, Calvary doesn’t preach: it is spiritual investigation of a subject which is generally argued along entrenched, political lines. A bit like a gentle parish priest instead of the usual fire and brimstone pulpit zealotry. The whodunit element (for the potential assassin remains secret) is not of particular importance, nor is the violence, being more a way of tying the plot together with an urgency and sinister undercurrent.

Calvary is on an instant level about the Church, its abuses and organised religion generally. But beneath that superficial subject, the film is more of an examination of the human condition, and attempts to find solutions for all the inexplicable horror of life. This is much like religion. A superb and entertaining film more concerned with stimulating thought than cheap thrills.

Review: Fargo

The Coen brothers’ 1996 movie Fargo was typical of the sibling team: idiosyncratic, well-made and, as a result, a popular cult hit. Thus, a TV spin-off seemed doomed to mediocrity. Such translation from big to little screen sounds a bizarre venture – usually it is the opposite way around. Admittedly, the two mediums are now closer than ever. Since The Sopranos took elements of cinema to long-form TV drama, we have seen a number of highly successful programs that are really just long films.

What creator Noah Hawley has done so well is to recreate the overall ‘feel’ of the film. Many elements are similar, from individual scenes to motifs to character types. The same snowy plains of northern border country are once again home to the strange wit and depraved horror of the original story. Distinctive Scandinavian-American accents add a touch of parody to the homicidal plot. Yet he has injected sufficiently novel ideas to keep the venture fresh. The individuals are entirely new, as is the story, spread out over ten episodes at a tantalizing pace. This is a prerequisite for something that relies on viewers returning week after week.

Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) is a passive mediocre insurance salesman in Bemidji, Minnesota. Much the same as car salesman Jerry Lundegaard in the original, he is a born loser, all deference and mediocrity. His wife bullies him, his brother bullies him, his high school bully still bullies him. One day, however, Lester's apologetic nature changes after a chance encounter with an out-of-town nutjob. Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) is the archetypal charismatic psychopath, his clothes as snappy as his threatening banter (and temper). Convincing Lester to stand up for himself, Mrs. Nygaard is battered to death with a hammer. Soon, the two are enmeshed in a cycle of murder which draws the attention of homely rookie cop Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman).

British actor Martin Freeman seemed like an odd choice to play the lead, as Fargo is so entrenched in its American world. Yet this unexpected casting has paid off, Freeman well able to capture the bubbling evil spilling out of the repressed nobody, all with a lightly comic touch. Think of the other average joes he has played: Tim in The Office, Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit and Watson in Sherlock. Billy Bob Thornton also manages to tread the line between serious and comedic, but with an icy menace that escapes from the television. Like Lester, we may know that Lorne is not a role model, yet there is something so infectiously appealing. Various simple Minnesotan folk and small-town trailer trash saddos enter this world to offer witticisms or be creatively slaughtered.

Fargo has managed to shrug off the weight of expectation and bring a brilliant slice of entertainment to the small screen in its own right. It retains all the positive elements of the film and strides off confidently in its own direction where necessary. I can only predict improvement as the weeks continue. 

'Highly irregular is the time I found a human foot in a toaster oven.'

Review: The Double

Until recently, Richard Ayoade was known primarily as a cult TV comedy actor and that nerd from The IT Crowd. With his directorial debut, Submarine (2010), Ayoade has started to create a name for himself as a promising filmmaker. The aforementioned production was a downbeat, quirky British feature about a mildly eccentric Welsh boy's growing pains. It was packed with dry wit, dark humour and bleak outlook. Ayoade has retained some of those elements, and exaggerated others, in his latest release. The Double is an adaptation of the Dostoevsky novel of the same name, about a low-grade governmental employee who loses his mind when a doppelganger starts stealing his life.

That basically describes the plot of the film, too. Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) plays Simon James, a depressed minor civil servant who suffers from crippling self-doubt. He is in love with aloof co-worker Hannah (Mia Wasikowska) but too nervous to do anything about it. Between his crushingly miserable job, empty ramshackle flat and passive aggressive mother there is nothing in Simon's life. That is before his lookalike James Simon shows up, finding employment in his office and generally dazzling everyone with his gregarious charm. For James Simon is the reverse of Simon James, the other side of the same-DNA coin, and is a man who gets what he wants. The extrovert knows that 'the world steps aside for a man who knows where he's going', and proceeds to punish hapless Simon. He steals Hannah, Simon's flat and eventually pushes him out of the company. 

Visually, The Double is predictably being compared to Brazil and Eraserhead. Ayoade has created an Orwellian dystopia of a setting, somewhere unnamed where the Soviet apartment blocks have a North Korean attitude to electrical supply. Simon's company is just a grey building of grey cubicles and grey employees, run by their Big Brother boss, 'The Colonel'. The whole thing looks great, in a depressing kind of way, and Ayoade has filmed it spectacularly. Stylish use of light, camera work and soundtrack instills the feeling that we are ourselves immersed in an inescapable '80s dictatorship. But what is the point of doing this? The film really could have been set anywhere, because it is not about exterior themes but interior ones. Politics and architecture has nothing to do with the personal issues at the heart of the story. As funny as the catch-22 bureaucracy and health-and-safety-gone-mad incidents are, they do distract from the themes at the heart of the story. What it does do, nonetheless, is make the audience feel like depressed Simon.

Is the film about two characters or just the one? Is James another part of Simon or is he really a separate person? For me, The Double does tell the story of two people, but in a wider sense is an examination of the complexities of human personality. The use of a Kafka-esque plot is a neat way to muse, Jungian-ly, on these matters. Simon's inability, then need, to assert himself is as important as the jokes and aesthetics. I suspect that Ayoade has created a work far deeper than a contemporary review will be able to analyse comprehensively.

The plot is not particularly original. Maybe it was in nineteenth century Russia, but in cinema the identity theft scenario has been played already. Richard E. Grant even saw himself usurped by his own boil (How to Get Ahead in Advertising). Still, there is a wickedly dark humour. Comic cameos pop up constantly, with the likes of Tim Key, Chris Morris and Chris O'Dowd. Most of Submarine's cast is present, taking with them some of the flavour of their last collaboration. Eisenberg is well-suited to both roles, for he plays James and Simon.This film will be cinematic Marmite - but love it or hate it, there's no doubt that Ayoade has shown that he is not a one trick pony in terms of filmmaking. One to watch...

The Most Influential (Western) Films of All Time

1) Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895)
Lasting just 45 seconds, and without sound or story, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory is credited as the first real movie. I can't call it thrilling in today's CGI, high definition cinematic landscape, what with it just being some people walking out of a big gate, but the Lumiere brothers had to start somewhere. It captivated millions as they caught their first glimpse of motion pictures at fairground demonstrations, including filmmakers like Melies, inspiring some to have a go themselves. It was the beginning of the biggest art form of the next century, an industry now worth billions.

2) The Great Train Robbery (1903)
Cinema was around for a few years before it started telling stories. So amazed was everyone at the moving pictures that they were content to watch a train slowing down or people leaving work. However, a few ingenious showmen changed that, offering crowds the chance to be entertained as well as amazed. We should, at this point, pause to recognise George Melies and his efforts. A genius illusionist, the Frenchman introduced many techniques of trickery to tell stories in exotic or fantastic locations (such as the moon), essentially inventing special effects during the twentieth century's first decade. However, the film that really solidified the narrative structure - a tale with a beginning, middle and end - was The Great Train Robbery. The first Western, it relayed the events surrounding a band of cowboy desperadoes who rob a train. They are pursued and killed. In 1903 that was quite a complex and thrilling novelty. Audiences loved it, and the fact that we go to the cinema to watch a story can be traced back to The Great Train Robbery's success.

This closing shot, pun intended, was recreated at the end of Goodfellas

3) The Birth of a Nation (1915)

A controversial film to say the least - perhaps don't cite it in your top 5. Telling the story of the Civil War and Reconstruction era, the Confederate States are pious victims, the KKK victorious heroes, and the Union Army marauding murderers (white actors in blackface). It is also credited with having started a KKK revival. Director DW Griffith did partially redeem himself with his next film Intolerance, a response to the accusations that he was an out-and-out bigot. Political content aside, The Birth of a Nation makes it onto this list because it introduced a host of new techniques. Perhaps not so obvious these days, at the time it was groundbreaking. Epic length and structure, large battles, scenes of great tragedy and emotion are all present. The complexity and the realism changed how people made films. It also solidified the cinema movie as a narrative tale lasting between one and two hours. Quentin Tarantino, that childish celebrator of bloody violence, claims to have made Django Unchained partly as a response to The Birth of a Nation, and that was almost a century later.

4) Strike / Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Despite waging a civil war, managing mass executions and famines, and bringing about communist utopia, the Soviets found time to revolutionise cinema. Their main contribution was the invention of montage - the blending of different images to convey new meaning. It is something that we take for granted, but when cannibalistic Siberian peasants first witnessed the phenomenon in Sergei Eisenstein's Strike it was beyond comprehension. Montage is now an accepted staple of filmmaking. For the most famous example, watch the celebrated Odessa Steps sequence in Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, and consider how before the First World War the whole scene would have been shot from one, static camera.

5) Metropolis (1927)

Keen not to allow those pesky Bolsheviks over in the East to dominate, the Germans churned out nightmarish Expressionist cinema during their troublesome Weimar years. Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari mirrored the feverish paranoia of a continent in the grip of extremism and uncertainty. The Expressionists were influential for two reasons: first, they helped to establish horror, underpinning its early Gothic elements. Second, aesthetically their style can be traced up to the present day. Many of its directors went to Hollywood as the Nazis came to power (such as Preminger, Lang and Lubitsch), taking with them all of their stylistic acumen. From Gothic horror to Neo-Noir, the aesthetics remain alive and well today. Metropolis, from Fritz Lang, is one of the more epic examples. Different versions exist (mostly due to alternate scores), but any will highlight the grandeur and artistic extremities of the genre.

6) The Jazz Singer (1927)

The Jazz Singer earns its place in the pantheon of influential films for one simple reason. While unremarkable in terms of content, the 1927 production was the first film to use sound. Previously, any noise was due to live accompaniment. Now, however, it was coming out of the images themselves. The premier, set to coincide with Yom Kippur around which the plot was based, was by all accounts a frenzy of rapturous applause and cheers. It signaled the end of silent cinema, and thus many elements of the movies - acting styles had to adapt for a start. New stories were possible to tell, while old ones were quickly forgotten. Many stars rapidly faded as they failed to keep up with the times. A technological change more profound than colour, digital or 3D, that is what Warner Brothers' The Jazz Singer did for cinema.

The politically incorrect premier

8) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
The first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs laid the template for future animations. Master illustrator Walt Disney embarked on the ambitious project in 1934, having previously concerned himself only with shorts. The perceived folly drew scorn and concern from many quarters - old Walt even had to mortgage his own house to fund it. With hindsight it is easy to see that the doubters were going to be proven wrong. Painstaking attention to detail was taken by the various artists behind it, who worked tirelessly to achieve a more perfect look. New camera technology was used to enhance a three-dimensional quality. Despite Snow White being hand-drawn, its influence can be traced to today's Pixar computer animations

7) Citizen Kane (1941)

The greatest film of all time, as Citizen Kane is so often declared. Its sheer brilliance influenced almost every filmmaker that followed. Still in his twenties when he wrote, directed, starred in and produced this (he was anything but modest), Orson Welles never managed to recreate the genius to quite the same degree. The protagonist, Charles Foster Kane, is based on the successes and tragedies of sensationalist newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. In truth, several other characters and personality types were in the mix, but Hearst did not see them. So incensed was he at his negative portrayal that he did everything in his power to starve Citizen Kane of the oxygen of publicity. Indeed, its critical reputation started to reach epic proportions only in the 1950s, when critics and theorists lavished praise upon it. It was innovative in several ways: the layered cinematography introduced a complex depth of field, with experimentation and odd camera angles enhancing the film's idiosyncratic visuals; a non-linear narrative structure which was to be repeated so often during the '40s and '50s; stunningly novel use of sound; and special effects used so consummately that the viewer does not notice them. In practically every way, Citizen Kane transformed the motion picture.

Note the epic depth of field, aged actors and hyperbolic aesthetics

9) The Third Man (1949)

With its Noir style, Europe's The Third Man took the expressionist-tinged, chiaroscuro style to its peak. Canted angles, heavy lighting and crumbling buildings convey the mood of its postwar Viennese setting, then home to black market criminality and ruinous poverty. The soundtrack was a fittingly atmospheric rambling of zither, a traditional central European instrument, which danced along to the changing emotions of the protagonist. Many famous names were involved in the production: Carol Reed, Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles, Graham Greene, David Selznick. This was, perhaps, the secret ingredient to its success. Add in some famous lines, Hollywood chases and gunfights, and an uncompromisingly cynical series of emotions, and it is not hard to see why The Third Man stands out as the peak of cinema's combination of entertainment and art.

10) Hitchcock's Entire Filmography (1922 - 1976)

It is almost impossible to boil the master of suspense down into one condensed production. Vertigo is the critics' favourite, Pyscho ushered in film gore and the slasher subgenre (along with Peeping Tom), and The Birds is a textbook of tension. But Hitchcock had been a successful director as far back as the silent era, and overall the rotund Cockney influenced film more than any individual picture could. To give a comprehensive break-down of his skills would take too long - read a book about him. So a slight cheat, but in every way - thematic, technical, narrative content..inal - cinema would simply not be the same without Alfred Hitchcock.

11) Rome, Open City (Roma, Citta Aperta) (1945)
Roberto Rossellini had been influenced by some works, such as Ossessione, but with Rome, Open City the Mediterranean maestro kick-started Italian Neo-Realism, unleashing a new approach to filmmaking altogether. As the genre's name would suggest, realism was at the heart of things here. And Italy. Rossellini initially began shooting a documentary in 1944 just months after those nasty Nazis had been stomping around the capital. In the grip of war and poverty, shooting was difficult. Thus the movie has the look not of a polished production but an amateur newsreel. Locations were real and extras were non-actors, adding an authenticity that studios blow huge budgets striving to achieve. The shoddy quality serves only to reinforce the fact that we are watching a slice of history. After its release, other filmmakers in Italy followed Rossellini's example. They told stories from the everyday, focusing on people usually ignored by cinema. By removing a camera's sound equipment and dubbing after, they found a new mobility which suited their aims. These radical approaches later influenced French New Wave and New Hollywood. Martin Scorsese, for example, makes films the way that he does today partly due to Rome, Open City's trailblazing. 

12) Breathless (A Bout de Souffle) (1960)
Learning from Italian Neo-Realism's storytelling styles, and profoundly influenced by Hollywood gangster / detective films, Jean-Luc Godard produced a runaway success which was to stand out among other great works of the French New Wave. Focusing on a young criminal who models himself as a Gallic Humphrey Bogart (le Bogy), we watch the tragic tale of a man losing at life. The relationship with his girlfriend, trapped in the middle of this tragedy, forms the central action. Urban location shooting, improvisation, a stripped-back plot, and music caused contemporary viewers to feel as if they were watching something truly energetic. The French New Wave's realism-oriented style mixed with pop culture was to impact Hollywood in much the same way as Italian Neo-Realism.

Le whimsy

13) The Graduate / Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Since the early 1930s, Hollywood had been censured by the rigid Production Code, enforced by the Hays Office. These puritanical killjoys stamped their moral outlook on cinema with the zeal of Oliver Cromwell. They were never accused of liberalism - the Code's values bordered on fascistic. Saying 'damn', racial miscegenation and nude silhouettes, for example, were completely banned. However, during the sixties (when else) censorship was increasingly undermined, culminating in these two films. The Graduate and Bonnie & Clyde were, at this point, scandalous. Violence, sex and profanity was present in shocking hyperbole. There was blood washing around B & C while The Graduate's pornographic plot was accompanied by the sounds of those hellraisers Simon and Garfunkel. Their acceptance marked the death of censorship. Young filmmakers (such as Scorsese, Coppola and Spielberg) began injecting as much as they could of all that had previously been banned, challenging the very art of cinema. Classical Hollywood was over - New Hollywood had begun.

14) Star Wars (1977)
A technical innovation that does owe something to Stanley Kubrick's '60s space nightmare 2001: A Space Odyssey. Quite simply, the special effects blew cinema apart. They were innovative beyond belief, and furthermore money was lavished on developing technologies after release. It was the highest-grossing film of all time, making an indelible mark on global culture outside of the movies. Two more sequels followed successfully, and a prequel trilogy less successfully. Another trio is in the mix. This is, however, the film to blame for the rise of the blockbuster, stuffed with effects but thematically shallow.

15) Toy Story (1995)
The final item on the list is not a joke - Toy Story really will stand out among the Citizen Kanes of Western cinema. Really, it comes down to the technical accomplishments, and how film is nowadays. For it was the first full CGI film, a feature-length picture made without a single second of recorded acting. In many ways, Toy Story is like a modern Snow White. And it cannot be written off as merely a kids' film. Whereas Avatar is justifiably ridiculed for style over substance, Toy Story is filled with wit, cultural references and adult humour. It stars Tom Hanks and insult comedian Don Rickles, who had acted in Casino and Kelly's Heroes. It grossed millions, achieved critical acclaim, and spawned two equally successful sequels. But more importantly, it ushered in the digital age of cinema, where computers play an unequivocally vital role.