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'