FilmWhinge: January 2015

Friday, 23 January 2015

REVIEW: Whiplash (2015)

After two hopelessly bland films and two reviews that are so angry they may even verge on unfair (apologies) here finally comes a film that left me in awe. Whiplash is a film about emotional abuse, the student-teacher relationship and about the suffering of the artist as a young man, but it is also a film that defies easy categorisation. Not because it has a story that takes in all of these tropes and more, but because it is so well directed, edited and scored that it feels almost unique. It is also apparently 107 minutes long, but it flies.

Andrew (Miles Teller) wants to be one of the greats, a drummer who can keep any tempo and can go harder and faster than anyone else. He also wants to be noticed by the highly influential music teacher Fletcher (J. K. Simmons). Fletcher is tough verging on abusive, though they both believe that it was the cymbal that nearly decapitated Charlie Parker that made him a great, so they are evenly matched. This kind of obsessive ambition and a gruelling self-imposed practise regime leads to a several tense confrontations.

Like many of the best films, the appeal of Whiplash is difficult to put into words – so bear with me, I’ll try my best. There have been jazzy films before, films whose aesthetics mirror the discordance and unpredictability in the changing tempos of jazz, though it is difficult to think of a film that is as sustained a riff as Whiplash. A bout de soufflé comes close though it is more interested in varying its speed, as does Shadows though it is more interested in the people in front of the camera. Whiplash starts with a drum roll over black. The drums get louder and faster until it is almost unbearable and when the film starts, it doesn’t let up. Even simple scenes that could have been used to give the audience time to breath like a sequence in which Andrew walks home from class keep the tempo going. Which is what makes the film so exhilarating. What makes it great is that writer-director Damien Chazelle never lets it feel empty or repetitive.

The characters are fully realized and the fast editing and fancy camerawork does not get in the way of the performances, which are indeed excellent. The film is very physical, rare enough for American cinema – it is tense because you really do think that people could get hurt here and suddenly, unexpectedly. Simmons owns the space around his character and you watch him and look for every movement of his face and every gesture because it is always significant. Teller is great too. He is quieter but his performance is never overwhelmed by Simmons’. The suspense never lets up and every scene moves at a rapid pace and, best of all, the film’s ends without diluting any of what went before. It doesn’t slow down and yet it never seems to be shrill or overbearing (…maybe the car crash…) and it is never boring. Where a lot of recent cinema is about good scenes packaged together into a compilation, Whiplash does not allow a tired scene – it doesn’t stop to explain or rest or consider. It is a sustained, fast-paced, jazzy film and one of the most complete and fully realized films in recent years.

It is easy to forget that a film of quick cutting and fast pans (the final scene has some great pans) can still feel innovative. A bout de soufflé can still feel fresh, but watch Hot Fuzz again and it already feels kind of old. Chazelle shows a remarkable awareness of where to put a camera and how to frame a shot and cut a scene and his film is very effective, but he also never loses sight of the performances and the drama and the tension. There isn’t a shot or a cut here that feels unnecessary or pointless. Chazelle knows exactly what he is doing and Whiplash is a very thrilling and rich film because of that. The final sequence in particular is one of the best in recent years, though to get the full effect, you need to see it where it was intended to be seen – in a cinema and turned up loud. Masterful.

Thursday, 8 January 2015

REVIEW: Birdman (Or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance Or Whatever)(2015)

Acting is tough, so very, very tough. It is even worse if you don’t believe in what you are doing, y’know. Because no one wants to be popular, popularity is for the sell-outs. What everyone wants and what we all strive for is prestige, isn’t it. Or is it the ability to disappear in a role, to take on someone else’s problems and escape your own, but to find something within yourself while you are this other person, this character, that will help you become a fuller, better person in real life, whatever that is. But this constant search, this struggle, to find your true self is what acting is all about. Or is it just a relentless rat race to get the next big role, to stay on everyone’s minds at all times, to be seen as the best, to have everyone know your name and know that you are indeed a genius. So, anyway, acting is tough, whether you approach it as a constant search for self-fulfilment or self-definition or just for plain old Truth. Or filthy lucre. Either way its tough as hell.

There are few films about acting that don’t trouble their audiences with unbridled narcissism and dew-eyed sentimentality about the trials of this career choice and of the apparently low return and inevitable, heartbreaking decline in popularity. Chaplin’s Limelight is the kind of film that you want to strangle, and Birdman is not really all that much better. It is still a film that sentimentalises a job that most people wouldn’t consider particularly difficult – taxing, yes, but hardly coalmining – and it is amply rewarded, indeed often ridiculously so. It is also another film about acting in which the protagonist is played by an actor that would invite the audience to identify a certain truth behind the film. In this case, Birdman as played by Riggan as played by Michael Keaton is obviously (indeed too obvious for it to be deemed particularly clever) Batman. And the film is another one of those ones in which an actor loses popularity and so strives for prestige. Riggan is mounting a production of Raymond Carver in an effort to gain instant prestige, but the film isn’t really interested in addressing the cynical idea that certain performances can invite instant popularity and instant prestige and others nothing regardless of the quality of the actual performance. Why do Raymond Carver if it is all about prestige and why should Raymond Carver work as a passport to prestige if that is all it is used for? Is art really art if self-interest is at the heart of it? Does the true artist care about his public persona (I use the masculine because this stupid film insists that true artists are exclusively men – women here stand aside in awe or invent pregnancies) or does he create art because he thinks the public will dig it? The film doesn’t say.

Birdman doesn’t say anything about anything. It is the kind of film that pokes at interesting and profound ideas, but doesn’t have the patience to look at them properly. It points out that superhero films have taken over, but leaves it at that as if that particular insight is unique and groundbreaking enough. It suggests that this is what a modern, cinema-going audience wants, and says no more (and in fact ignores the ascent of television – too risky perhaps). It shows real sexism and even an attempted rape, and wonders if it has anything to do with the creation of real and true art, but prefers to move on (the film is CGI-ed to look like one long take, which is nicely done but noticeably fake and does not allow the film to ever slow down and think). It gestures at emotions, but it seems to be bored by them, and watching the film, it is difficult to care about anything or anyone that wanders in front of the camera as it completes its little technological innovation.

Birdman is a film without a point, a masquerade of intelligence and witty remarks without an ounce of intellectual or emotional weight. There is one nice scene in which Mike (Edward Norton) shows Riggan how to act a scene, which shows how two actors might have fun with a scene as written, getting into and around every line on the page and even making some of it up to find something real behind all the nice words and lines. It is the only scene in the film that is any fun, and the only one that suggests something positive and creative. And yet the camera will soon move on almost immediately to more self-pitying and more sexism. The film, by the way, does not refer to or acknowledge the fact that film is incredibly male-centric so the sexism isn’t intentional and it isn’t pointed.

The film is messy and it likes to roam around, so there didn’t seem to be any point in reviewing it soberly and mathematically, but the criticisms stand. The film is ultimately boring, because after so much whingeing and so much pretension, there isn’t anything in it worth staying for. It is the kind of film that adds little and takes away a lot, particularly when one considers that there are things here that it could have addressed, that could have made it worth making and worth watching, if only Iñárritu and his three other screenwriters had the balls. In that regard, it isn’t too far away from The Theory of Everything and that’s pretty damning for a film so self-consciously innovative.

Wednesday, 7 January 2015

REVIEW: The Theory of Everything (2015)

Why bother reviewing a film like The Theory of Everything? Let’s be slightly unfair for a moment. A film like this exists primarily as Oscar bait – viewed by actors, directors, writers and producers as a career stepping stone, the Oscar-winning film that nobody will particularly enjoy all that much but which will lead to greater and better opportunities, like a superhero franchise all your own. I am being cynical here – I don’t really think that this is the only reason The Theory of Everything exists. And yet the film is so drab, and dull, and paint-by-numbers conventional that it really doesn’t seem like there was any attempt whatsoever to do anything interesting here at all. There is no joy or excitement or experimentation in this film, just a dull exercise in filmmaking for the January schedules.

The Stephen Hawking Story – re-organised for an accessible film with as little science as could conceivably be put into a film about a scientist, an increasingly debilitating illness that knows to kick in at the most emotionally powerful moment, an able-bodied actor summoning all of his skill to mimic a real illness, a score that points out when something is supposed to be heart-rending or –warming, a condescending tone, a dream about walking that feels unhelpful and the story of a life re-written to the beats of the Oscar Drama Template (Disability).

Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones (the latter quite good, actually) are given only a few scenes in which they are allowed to act. The rest of the time they are repressing so that those rare moments of acting will register in the mind of the near-comatose audience. Director James Marsh keeps everything recognisable so as not to overwork a tired audience. Anthony McCarten starts with a tagline – ‘His Mind Changed Our World. Her Love Changed His’ – and yawns his way through the average-length script with numerous nods to A Beautiful Mind, an Oscar-winning genius-with-a-disability success story in somewhat recent memory. In short, nobody seems to be trying very hard and nothing that isn’t unexceptional is allowed to happen. That leaves us with only the recognisable. We have the funny scene that turns sad due to a sudden relapse, the sad scene with some ‘unexpected’ humour, the scenes where loves and lives and sicknesses are all carefully organised to push along a film with a strict three-act structure and a fear of any complication that doesn’t fit the ‘story.’ This is not about praising or documenting a real life struggle, it is about negating real life and trying to find the best framework for presenting a reality in the most lucrative and rewarding manner possible. It is a film of professional ambition and cold, cynical emotional box-ticking.

It isn’t that this film is particularly bad. But it is so happy to be bland and unrewarding and unoriginal that it actually makes you angry. Why spend so much money and take up so much of everyone’s time and effort only to achieve a film like this? It isn’t even that this film should be offering anything new – there are many great films that are also somewhat redundant – but The Theory of Everything offers nothing. There is nothing it does that hasn’t been done before – not even by accident. You watch it and you just dream of something, anything, everything that the film could be or could do to shock, surprise, entertain, inform, challenge or excite but the film remains bland. The one good thing that the film manages is that, when it’s over, you are ready for a Cassavetes, an Altman, a Godard, a Loach, a Fellini, something, anything alive.

Tuesday, 6 January 2015

ARTICLE: The Best Films of 2014

It hasn’t been a particularly good year for cinema, though there are six genuinely great films (two or three even innovative) and at least one very funny comedy. Infer pessimism or optimism for the state of cinema if you wish, but it isn’t a particularly good sign if there are not enough films great enough to make up a Top 10. Although, looking back over previous Top 10’s, it may simply be a case of a tightening of standards. Either way, most Top 10’s look foolish after a few years anyway so why not this Top 6.

6. Only Lovers Left Alive. Good, fun, optimistic cinema. Jarmusch pokes fun at the idea that living forever would be a depressing and boring experience and fills his frame with everything he thinks makes living an endlessly surprising, exciting and enjoyable experience.

5. Two Days, One Night is a moving and quiet drama about a woman trying to overcome her depressive tendencies in order to fight to keep her job. It is a slight film – probably too slight for many viewers – but this kind of emotional journey into the everyday is becoming more and more important. The ending is one of complex emotions – triumph, failure, empowerment and the awareness of more struggles to come – and the film is refreshingly direct and small, but never simplistic or meaningless.

4. Starred Up has been sold as a bruising, laddish prison film full of vicious violence but it is so much better than that. The performances are so uniformly excellent that it would feel only insulting to single out Jack O’Connell, brilliant as he is. It is a film of explosive anger in tiny rooms and it makes for riveting, disturbing viewing but it is the vision of officialdom ignoring people who need the most help that packs a valuable political punch.

3. It feels rather cynical to put such an outrageous and overblown film in front of two films that are so important and realistic, but The Wolf of Wall Street is the ultimate outrage film. If you hate Di Caprio’s Belfort after the first ten seconds, half the fun is watching him plumbing more and more depths. Taking such delight in such hatred may seem unhelpful, but Scorsese has attempted to show the mentality that threw us all into economical turmoil and he doesn’t pull any punches – particularly with a triumphant, emotional concluding speech that dares you to be roused. Cynical, nasty but daring, angry and, yes, important.

2. By contrast, Nymphomaniac has nothing particularly of value to say about politics or the world, but it was one of the most enjoyably cinematic films of the year, and probably the one that will diminish the most in the cold light of television. It is provocative and risky as you would expect, and no matter who you are, there will be something in it that stumps you and forces you to think – even if it is something about an emperor and his new wardrobe (for me it was the use of Rammstein in the first five minutes). It is thoroughly entertaining and challenging, bursting with ideas and invention and not giving a damn if you and your prejudices get left behind. As confident as unsparing as Godard at his best.

1. Equally innovative though much more likable and emotionally resonant was Richard Linklater’s immensely likable and incredibly (considering the production) laidback Boyhood. Made with so much assurance, nothing seems to happen in the film and yet the film is so full of recognizable and relatable moments of drama that it seems packed. Watching it it can be difficult to think of another film that has so much of life in it and yet feels so simple and effortless. Powerful, emotional and brilliant.

Other films that I liked this year include Fruitvale Station, In Bloom, ’71, the actually very funny 22 Jump Street and The Homesman. There were a lot of films that were less successful but remain worth mentioning, so I will – The Past, Camille Claudel 1915, Keeping Rosy, Here Be Dragons, Stranger By The Lake, Norte, The End of History, Dallas Buyer’s Club, Oxi: An Act of Resistance and, yes, Rob The Mob.

Monday, 5 January 2015

ARTICLE: 2014 Round-Up

Here is a quick round-up of short reviews of 2014 films I have seen but didn’t have the time to write up properly. All are either films seen recently for awards consideration (through my membership with the OFCS) and the rest are films I missed and saw later on TV or DVD or VOD.

The Skeleton Twins is an indie American drama taking inspiration from Ingmar Bergman in its dark themes and from Judd Apatow with its sense of humour and the casting of Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader. Both are quite good – particularly Hader – but the film does not seem sure about whether it wants to follow the typical beats of the Apatow formula or challenge and interrogate as Bergman would have done. It veers too far towards Apatow, as well as towards mawkish sentimentality, to be properly successful, but it is reasonably diverting.

A Most Wanted Man is another John le Carre adaptation to follow the success of the recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Anton Corbijn will probably always be worth watching, even if he continues picking less than brilliant adaptations (see The American). Here, he is straitjacketed by the plot-heavy story, but he nonetheless gives the film a nice feel and a forward momentum it would otherwise certainly lack. The film ends up feeling more successful than it probably should.

More successful, though slightly barmy, is Tommy Lee Jones’ new film The Homesman, which takes a funny but powerfully bleak, existential view of the Western and never lets up. It is a strange, flawed, risk-taking, endlessly intriguing film full of suffering and madness – and it is probably one of the most successful psychological Westerns yet made.

There is something of the art installation about Maidan, a documentary record of the protests in the central square in Kiev during 2013 and 2014, which makes it a moving, bold and oddly inhuman spectacle. The camera is largely kept steady and at a distance, capturing an almost anthropological view of a revolution in progress. Moments of raw humanity do manage to sneak in, but they are just as likely to be overwhelmed – many of the images in the film require a lot of searching. Whether Loznitsa was aiming for balance or a cold purely observational style, he doesn’t really succeed in either case, since the cameras are entirely focussed on the plight of the protestors and not the cops and the camera, editing and sound are often engineered to provide an emotional effect. None of this is particularly problematic, though it leaves the film feeling somewhat slight. The film’s most damaging flaw is its near total lack of context – there are only a few paragraphs of text – which robs this protest of its arguments, its debates, its flaws and its strengths. By the time the film closes with vigils and tributes for the hundreds dead, it is difficult to know why any of it had to happen.

The Boxtrolls is an odd film – less successful than ParaNorman, but more challenging. It has a wandering plot and pays too much attention to Boxtrolls messing around Minions-like, which is never particularly funny. It takes a while to get going, but by the end of it, you may have warmed to it enough for it not to matter. Or maybe not.

Night Moves is a film about environmental terrorists from an arthouse director and, hence, should have been more challenging and interesting than last year’s disappointingly mainstream The East. A pity then that after a fairly solid first half, the film reveals itself to be a context-less wallow in the old themes of guilt and paranoia. Instead of political and/or moral complexity, we get the same old ambiguity – a didactic form of non-didacticism in which the impression is given that the audience is left to think whatever it likes and is yet carefully guided towards a shrugging apathy. Kelly Reichardt avoids making a point about anything and Night Moves, somewhat shamefully, offers no opinion but attacks those who do.

As for films I’ve missed, but caught up with:

I have a fondness for Mark Cousins’ style of unembarrassed and honest pretension and I have enjoyed the infectious fun and joy of experimentation in the films What Is This Film Called Love? and Here Be Dragons. However, when Cousins is on firmer ground, he is less able to make it all up as he goes along. That problem effected parts of his massive The Story of Film series and it remains present in The Story of Children and Film. It has its moments and its insights, but it is less risky and less innovative and, therefore, less fun. On TV.

Heli is a tough Mexican crime film about drugs, torture and corruption in a remote part of Mexico. If there is a point to this film, and the long and lingering arthouse style suggests there is at least a surface point, it is lost in a parade of suffering and nastiness. Most people will come away from the film thinking about the scene where the bollocks are set alight rather than anything of value. In short, it is tough to figure out why this film exists. On TV.

Belle was better. A British costume drama that is (to a point) aware of the flaws within its own conventions, Belle attempts to address race and feminism from within the confines of the Austen-Merchant Ivory style. There are some nice scenes, particularly one in which Belle is disturbed when her servant for the day turns out to be black, suggesting that Belle is more comfortable amongst people of her own class rather than people of her own race. Ultimately, the film descends into silliness but it was a nice attempt to do something new and a welcome new perspective in an industry that is too often both white and male. Rental.

The Monuments Men should have been great fun with a nice little tribute to art underneath the comedy and drama, but it fails to strike a good balance between fun and ‘the message.’ Clooney over-sentimentalises the subject and his characters, and the ‘funny’ scenes, considering the cast, aren’t as funny as they should be. On TV.

Ida was another film that should have worked. Its story about a woman looking into her community’s past actions during the turmoil of WWII and their collaboration with the Nazis recalls the excellent The Nasty Girl. However, the film is made with a self-conscious arthouse style that recalls a degree of Carl Dreyer, but which mainly mirrors a lot of other modern arthouse films. The style adds little beyond a melancholic, leaden tone and the film’s real ideas about the past and suffering and knowledge are lost underneath such consciously austere stylistics. VOD.

The best films that I missed this year were Two Days, One Night and Starred Up, both excellent depictions of people left behind, either in the workplace or in prison. Both films are remarkably powerful and dramatic and stand as important works calling for more understanding and more communication. I’ll be writing about both tomorrow. Rental.

Thursday, 1 January 2015