Author: Jason Day

The Eye of the Storm (2011)

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Director: Fred Schepisi. Paper Bark. (15)

DRAMA

 

 

Producers: Gregory J. Read, Antony Waddington.
Writer: Judy Morris.
Camera: Ian Baker.
Music: Paul Grabowsky.
Sets: Melinda Doring.

Geoffrey Rush, Judy Davis, Charlotte Rampling, Alexandra Schepisi, Helen Morse, Colin Friels, Simon Stone.

SYNOPSIS

Sydney, 1973: Matriarch Elizabeth Hunter (Rampling) controls everything around her: her children Basil (Rush) and Dorothy (Davis), her staff, the society around her. When she suffers a stroke and sensing her days are numbered, she decides on her most defiant act, to choose her time to die. As her children fuss around her to ensure they receive their inheritance after a lifetime of emotional neglect, the once great beauty toys with them until the time is right.

REVIEW

A twisted and bizarre slice of modern Gothic. It ticks all of that genre’s boxes, hingeing on sexual frankness and perversity, parental neglect, greedy and opportunistic servants and with a whiff of incest hanging in the air. The Hunters are an interesting family, psychologically speaking, so this is a welcome counselling session from Schepisi.

He adapts Patrick White’s celebrated 1973 novel into a showcase for masterful cinematic performance. Trouble is, he has concentrated too much on letting these actors develop wonderful characterisations, so his film as a whole atrophies and sinks. There is an electrifying film here waiting to get out, but Schepisi is unable or unwilling to let this happen.

None the less, the trio of leading performances are quite excellent, as one would expect from these professionals. Rampling has been making some exceptional choices over the past few years. This highly sensual and exotic actress was the correct, probably the only, choice to play Elizabeth Hunter. This is a woman who enjoys teasing her tightly wound up daughter with lines such as “your father’s penis”, she sleeps with her friends husbands friends and kisses away being found out with a dismissive “it’s only flesh on flesh”. She also sleeps with her daughter’s boyfriend, telling her “Well, you didn’t look like you wanted it”.

It’s unusual to see sexually active women over their 50’s in cinema without straying into prurient cougar or MILF territory, but Rampling is the right performer to convey such a character with intelligence and strength. There is an air of Norma Desmond with a blue rinse about her. The film opens with a shot of her stood proudly in the surf near her country residence, full of life and vigour but for the duration of the film she is completely horizontal and decrepit.

Rush has a ball as the fading drama queen who sees his return home as an excuse to get legless and get his leg over, quickly nestling into the bed of his mother’s favoured nurse Flora (played by the director’s daughter Alexandra). Basil has a touching bravado to him, vainly signing autographs for adoring admirers but he is a lone soul at heart, rudely denigrating his nurse/lover and reciting Shakespeare in the middle of the desert with no audience to hear.

Better still is the incredible physicality of Davis’ Dorothy. Davis herself has described her character as suffering an “arrested development” and she forces this interpretation throughout. From her first meeting with her crotchety mother, Davis is twitchy and on edge, an awkward movement culminates in the most muddled of embraces, as if both participants are visibly repelled by the other. Mother and daughter pat each other on the shoulders, simultaneously pushing each other away – the most brittle of emotional multi-tasking. In order to properly touch her mother, Davis has to order the nurse to leave the room, climbing into bed with her like the little girl she still is in many respects.

The bodily arsenal she deploys continues, as if Dorothy inhabits her very DNA – the head jerks on a stiff neck, tendons at full stretch, those admirably toned legs flail about in the most ungainly fashion as if she is a new born lamb in heels.

This is an elegant and intelligently written piece by Morris, full of nuanced characters whose psyches, as White noted in his novel, are examined, ridiculed and skewered with surgical precision. But this is also a cold, bereft story that had previously been deemed unfilmable, so full credit to her for creating a diverting, if not entirely substantial world of familial selfishness.

Schepisi doesn’t help by reclining back and trying to let the words speak for the film – he leaves himself pissing in the wind with a grand film with searing acting and everything going for it, but fails to push the product further. He squeezes in some clever visuals; this family is decaying and the rot is seen not only in Rampling’s fading looks but also as a maggot rummages around in the food at a society party Dorothy attends, Basil spies a fly in a jar and he refers to his diminishing libido: “I’ve been having a bit of trouble down there recently”. But Schepisi ultimately fails to fire on the cylinders in what could have been his masterpiece.

Read all about it…movies in the news (4 May 2013)

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The Catholic Online site reports here that Netflix is suffering a dip in popularity following new fee levels and losing streaming rights to 2,000 titles. Interesting to find out how streaming rights works.

The Guardian reports here that 5 members of the British film industry have been charged over an alleged movie tax relief fraud.

The Guardian always comes up with the better film articles. Here, in this regrettably short piece, Charlie Lyne looks at how American studios are bending over backwards to accommodate the censorship demands of Chinese cinema. But with upwards of $2bn of box office takings in China, it’s money well spent.

The Daily Telegraph’s Anne Billson has a good, long whinge about poor manners in the cinema here. Billson makes some smart observations and points out one cinema in the states, the Alamo Drafthouse, that has a zero tolerance policy toward people who talk during movies.

I highlight this because she annoyed the hell out of me on the Graham Norton Show two weeks back. The Independent’s Ellen E Jones wields a mighty stick. Here, she gives Gwyneth Paltrow a good battering with it. More please!

 

City Girl (1930)

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Director: F.W. Murnau. Fox Film Corporation.

SILENT

 

 

Producer: William Fox.
Writers: Berthold Viertel, Marion Orth.
Camera: Ernest Palmer.
Music: Christopher Caliendo (2008)
Sets: Harry Oliver.

Charles Farrell, Mary Duncan, David Torrance, Edith Yorke, Guinn Williams, Richard Alexander.

SYNOPSIS

Country bumpkin Lem (Farrell) takes a trip to the big city to sell his father’s (Torrance) precious wheat. Whilst eating at a diner, he strikes up a romance with the pretty but downtrodden waitress Kate (Duncan). Impulsively following the direction of a fortune card, he proposes to her. Delighted at the thought of a relaxing life in the country, she accepts and the overjoyed couple travel to his Minnesota farmland home. But the loved up couple face the scorn and derision of Lem’s father, who physically assaults Kate. When Lem fails to defend her, the relationship sours and Kate finds herself chased by farmhand Mac (Alexander).

REVIEW

The reputation of German movie maestro Murnau towered above his peers as much the man physically did, standing 6ft 9″ in his cotton socks.

Transplanted to America under the aegis of film producer William Fox and given complete and utter creative freedom, he produced the blissful, but expensive, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, of which City Girl is a companion piece.

But Sunrise, despite all of the critical kudos it heaped on Fox’s studio, earned very little money and Murnau found his creativity curtailed and there on in he was watched a little more closely. His work, thankfully, did not suffer too much as a result: there is no complete print of 4 Devils (1928) but City Girl shows Murnau on elegant top form.

Based on the play The Mud Turtle by Elliott Lester, it continues in a similar vein to Sunrise with the contrasts between rural and urban life, but this time around it is the countryside that is the harsher environment toward the outsider, who now is the supposedly worldly wise woman whose unexpected naivety leads her out of her comfort zone, rather than the innocent man driven mad by lust for a sexually forward harlot.

This is a simple morality tale, but evocatively told. Murnau, rather than trying to crack a sweet nut with a sledgehammer, presents the contrasts vividly with consummate cinematic skill.

In the country, the bread has to be sliced by hand for the little family. In Kate’s city, toast magically appears pre-sliced on an industrial conveyor belt to cope with demand.

In the countryside there are only vast expanses of arable land for boisterous locals. In the city, solitary and depressed Kate lives next door to an ever passing train and tends to a single flower. She has only a mechanical bird in a gilded cage for company. The robotic tweeting of this pretty ornament is a near perfect reflection of the automaton, wind-me-up-and-watch-me-go nature of Kate’s function as a waitress.

In this job, there is also an obvious continuation. Kate ups sticks for the sticks but soon finds that the life of sunbathing leisure she hoped for yields only more of the same drudgery – although they wear dungarees instead of suits and hats, she soon finds herself back in waitress garb serving endless cups of coffee to endlessly famished men.

Kate also has to deal with the prejudices and snobbery of the labouring classes – waitress is spelled out in letters that loom over the viewer, a millstone of suspicion hung draped over her.

Murnau weaves into this tale some adorable visual imagery, such as the newlyweds running and kissing through the wheat fields and the initial scenes of Kate and Lem first meeting which have a coyly sexual frisson.

Farrell, who was a popular box office star in the late 1920’s and throughout the 30’s, has exactly the right brand of wholesome, apple pie beauty for such a role, a boy who seriously needs to “man up” and grow a couple. Usually more beautiful than his leading ladies, he is the eponymous wide-eyed innocent, mooning over Duncan and blushingly turning away when her skirt rides up and he can see her thighs. He makes you feel this is the sort of man who believes a fortune card prophecy that if he marries a woman he’s known for only 10 minutes it will put the world to rights.

Duncan complements him delightfully  – a stellar silent movie turn of expressive eyes and suggestive, dramatic posture. Duncan was a capable performer who started late in silent movies (movie debut 1927) and retired too early only six years later.

Forthcoming movie releases…w/e 3 May 2013

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21 and Over – From the writers of The Hangover, so it follows that drinking excessively is integral to the plot. Is cinema staggering toward a new genre, ‘The Pissup’? Two college guys who are already 21 take their medical student friend out to celebrate his 21st, even though he has an important interview the very next day. The official Tumblr site, while fun, aggravatingly doesn’t tell you any details about the movie, so go to Wikipedia here. Showing nationwide.

All Stars (3D) –  kiddytastic dance movie, part Glee, part Grange Hill, in which a group of kids put on a show to help save their local youth centre. Featuring Girls Aloud’s Kimberly Walsh. Showing nationwide; the official Vertigo Films website is here.

Cimpanzee – I highlighted an interesting Guardian article about film’s such as this last week. Directed by the BBC’s former Natural History Unit maestro’s Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, this docudrama follows a young chimp who is left alone after a confrontation with a rival chimpanzee gang. Disney’s official site is here; the film will be showing all over the UK.

Come Out and Play – Mexican horror, a little like Village of the Damned, in which two soon-to-be parents take a holiday to an island where there are only children. Obviously, there’s something not quite right about them. The Facebook page is here, but it will only be showing on a limited run.

Dead Man Down – Colin Farrell and Noomi Rapace star in this thriller as two people drawn together by their desire for revenge. Terrence Howard and Dominic Cooper round off the star cast in this American debut for Niels Arden Oplev, the director of the original Girl With a Dragon Tattoo. This will be showing nationwide and the official website is here.

Dragon – Donnie Yen stars in this martial arts thriller about a reformed gang lord on the run and the detective who will stop at nothing to bring him down. Facebook page is here; the film will be shown on a limited run only.

Eye of the Storm – another article I picked up recently was an interview, again in The Guardian, with iconic Australian actress Judy Davis. She spoke about her role in this as Charlotte Rampling’s strange daughter who teams up with brother Geoffrey Rush to get their hands on their vast inheritance. If anything, it shows that these actors are continuing to make interesting cinematic choices. The official site is here; details of UK screenings are here.

Gimme the Loot – Bronx set drama in which two Graffiti artists embark on a journey to raise the funds to spray a New York landmark. The official site is here; the film will be showing at key cities only.

It’s Such a Beautiful Day – Don Hertzfeldt has been one of the world’s most inventive animator’s, making beguiling and sardonic line-drawing animations for nearly 20 years. This is his feature length debut. Showing at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London only; screening dates and times are here.

I’m So Excited – Pedro Almodovar is in danger of becoming the Spanish Woody Allen; all that early fame and talent fading into nothing more than light, fluffy efforts as he enters his twilight years. This effort, described by himself as a light, very light comedy, is set on a plane and features cameos from Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas. Official Facebook page is here; the film will be showing at key cities only.

Robosapien – no, not a futuristic horror, but even more horrific, if merchandising cash-ins get your gooseflesh going. This is a live-action/animated film based on the titular toy. Robbie Coleman and Penelope Ann Miller star. The official Facebook page is here and it will, mercifully, be showing at key cities only.

And on Thursday 9 May…

Star Trek: Into Darkness – director J.J. Abrahms’ follow-up to his reinvigorating take on the old Trekkie format sees the crew of the Enterprise returning to Earth only to find that someone has decimated their fleet and left the world in crisis. It’s up to them to hunt down the man responsible. The official UK site is here; it will, of course, be showing at every cinema up and down the country.

Read all about it…movies in the news (26 April 2013)

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Judy Davis is very probably Australia’s finest actor. She’s also one of the prickliest as this Guardian interview with Ryan Gilbey can attest. She has famously fallen out with many a director, including cinema titan David Lean and George Sluizer. A great glimpse into the method behind the star who doesn’t want to be a star…and any interview that gets the word ‘discombobulated’ into the first sentence.

 

Disney has often been slated for making animals in cinema too human. But how does this propensity to anthropomorphise animals affect our understanding of them? What’s the real truth and how does Hollywood make sure this doesn’t affect telling a good story? The Guardian’s Steve Rose looks at the implications here. And Disney are quoted saying many scientists are all for this view of animals. Well, obviously.

Oblivion (2013)

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Film review of the science fiction action blockbuster starring Tom Cruise as a man on a desolate Earth who uncovers some dark truths about what happened to the planet.

To like this review, comment on it or to follow this blog, scroll to the bottom of the page.

Director: Joseph Kosinski. Universal/Chernin/Ironhead et al (12A).

Sci-Fi

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Future movie releases…w/e 26 April 2013

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The ABCs of Death – 26 directors tell 26 different stories about ways to die in this disjointed and distinctly odd looking horror/drama. The official site is here; there are details of what cinemas are showing it here.

Bernie – comedy starring Jack Black as the nicest man in town who meets  Shirley MacLaine, the meanest woman who ever lived and sets about trying to make her happy. But when she is found dead, could the eternally optimistic Bernie have done the deed the whole town wanted to commit? Matthew McConaughey co-stars for director Richard Linklater. The official website is here; it will be showing at key cities only.

In the Fog – interesting, if intense sounding, Russian drama about an innocent who is caught up in events during WWII and is forced to become a hero as events and history escalate around him. The official site is here; it will be showing at key cities only.

The Look of Love – lots of publicity around this biopic of Paul Raymond, the owner of the SoHo Review Bar, the first venue to show full frontal nudity in the UK, but who would probably choke on his Martini if he saw what you could download on your lap-top these days. Steve Coogan plays Raymond, Anna Friel is his wife and Michael Winterbottom, who also directed Coogan in 24 Hour Party People, handles the megaphone chores. Official Facebook page is here; the film should be playing in most places across the UK.

Lords of Salem – speaking of odd films, here is another, from director Rob Zombie. A radio station DJ (Sheri Moon Zombie, the director’s wife) is given a box containing a record from the ‘Lords of Salem’. After playing it, she starts going mad…but is it the Lords returning for revenge on her modern day town of Salem? Co-starring Bruce Davison and Judy Geeson, the official site is here and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it will only be showing on a limited run.

Scarecrow – Jerry Schatzberg’s 70’s classic sees Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman as a couple of losers and the oddball characters they meet as they realise Hackman’s dream of setting up his own car wash. The official Park Circus website is here and the film will be showing at key cities only.

White Elephant – inspired by the true story of Argentinian Priest Father Mugica, this film follows his fight, along with a fellow priest and a social worker, to help the residents of a Favela. The official Axiom Films site is here; the film will be showing at key cities only.

 

Read all about it…movies in the news (16 April 2013)

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Been a while since I had a good read through the papers for movie articles, so here’s a quick run-down of some tasty movie related stories from the newspapers…

Ever thought there are too many film festivals? The Independent‘s Francesca Steele looks here at the forthcoming Sundance Festival London and asks why another festival, and one that originated in the states, could be beneficial to the UK.

Talking about film festivals, the Bradford Festival has honoured veteran actor Tom Courtney with a lifetime achievement award, on the 50th anniversary of the release of his film Billy Liar. The Telegraph’s Ben Lawrence looks at this here.

Given the slating (or should that be mauling?) that Emperor, I mean Tom, Cruise’s just released sci-fi blockbuster Oblivion received in the press, it’s a surprise to find out it had a good weekend at the UK box office. Good surmising in The Guardian of what quantifies a movie’s success, including The Croods, Beyond the Pines and other recent releases.

Future movie releases…w/e 19 April 2013

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Bait – This 2012 Australian Deep Blue sees a group of people trapped in a supermarket after a Tsunami wave hits. Also trapped are two huge Great White Sharks. Showing at the Empire Leicester Square only, which says much in itself. Wikipedia has the rundown and the stats here (check out the box office returns).

F*ck for Forest – Polish/German film about a German Non Government Organisation’s idea that sex can save the world. By selling porn, they give the proceeds to a fund to plant more trees around the globe. The official Dogwoof studios is here, with screening details found here.

Love Is All You Need – Pierce Brosnan finds himself again meeting up with a woman he may have fathered a child with many years ago. Mama Mia!  This time around, it’s Trine Dyrholm who is the mama. Showing at key cities only; the official website is here.

Me And You – Bernardo Bertolucci’s first film in nine years as a director sees him shun the lavish scale of his most famous films and concentrate on the very private and intimate. A disturbed young man finds himself stuck in a basement flat with an older woman. No official site, but The Guardian has a review here.

Promised Land – Gus van Sant directs Matt Damon in a topical story about two corporate sales people trying to buy drilling rights from local people. Despite a wide release in America, this politically slanted drama didn’t do well in the states. Wikipedia has a little more details here; it will be shown over most of the UK.

Rebellion – Matthieu Kassovitz, the director behind the incendiary French drama La Haine (1995) directs and takes the lead role in this action thriller about a group of dissidents in an French colony attacking a police station and taking hostages. IMDb has the rundown here but will only be showing at limited locations (check your local cinema websites).

The Words – Writer Bradley Cooper is on the cusp of success after he authors the next, great American novel. Trouble is, he didn’t write it and discovers the price for stealing another man’s work. Sounds suspiciously like Josh Brolin’s conundrum in Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. The official website is here.

And on Thursday 25 April…

Iron Man 3D – Well, there has to be a third movie squeezed out of any good film nowadays, rounding off a good franchise total the franchise and cashing in on a 3D format to help it along in multiplexes. Robert Downey Jr squares up to baddie Ben Kingsley as only the Iron Man knows how. Showing all over, the official Marvel site is here.

Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

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Director: Bradley Parker. Alcon Entertainment/FilmNation/Oren Peli/Brian Witten. (15)

HORROR

 


Producers: Oren Peli, Brian Witten.
Writers: Oren Peli, Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke.
Camera: Morten Soborg.
Music: Diego Stocco.
Sets: Aleksander Denic, Matthew Sullivan.

Jesse McCartney, Jonathan Sadowski, Devin Kelley, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Nathan Phillips, Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Dimitri Diatchenko.

SYNOPSIS

Four American teenagers embark on a tour of Europe and take in the standard sights and sounds. En route to Moscow, unofficial leader Paul (Sadowski) suggests they take the ultimate tourist trip to the abandoned city of Pripyat, vacated more than 20 years ago following the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster. Led by their guide Uri (Diatchenko) all goes well until their transport breaks down and the guide is killed by what seems to be a pack of dogs. But it soon becomes apparant they are not alone in this ghost town and the dogs are the least of their problems.

REVIEW

Modern horror ‘genius’ Peli is the maestro behind Paranormal Activity (noteworthy for being a horror movie filmed so cheaply that the budget didn’t stretch to including any thrills or scary moments) and wrote this film, which neatly piggybacks on the recent craze not for thrill seeking adventure holidays but for extreme tourism to areas either inhospitable, far out of the way or completely neglected.

The inspiration behind his admittedly interestingly set movie came from a photo he saw online posted by a girl riding through Pripyat on a motorbike. Rather cheekily, his film version was actually made on location in Serbia and Hungary, but we still get an eerily convincing impersonation from these other, former Eastern Bloc states.

There are some agreeably perky and terrified turns from the young cast, particularly Kelley as Amanda although a large amount of the film is consumed with the usual running around in the dark and moronic reasoning that teenagers in these sub-Blair Witch rip-offs engage in (surely American High Schools should now teach How to Survive Serial Killers and Getting Lost in the Wilderness classes alongside maths and science?).

What is criminally unforgivable though is how Peli and Parker combined are unable, or unwilling, to introduce even a modicum of shocks into their horror story.

There are a few jumpy moments and a bizarre shock when a bear interrupts them, but so much energy has been invested in dwelling on the unique and quite awesome place they have set their film, every other filmic consideration has been thrown to the wind. Off the bear, this is ridiculously forgotten about when it could have been easily reintroduced to scare us all some more. Character, wit, suspense, you name it, and it will probably have been left behind like your passport as you head off to the airport. Apart from the production design and camerawork that are uniformly excellent throughout.

The ‘Friends of Chernobyl Centres’ charity in the states criticised the film’s plot for being insensitive to those who died in the disaster and sensationalising events that had “tragic human consequences”. But it’s the paying public who should have been up in arms for spending their pretty dollars and trudging to their local multiplex to pour more cash into the producer’s coffers ($37m in global grosses on a $1m investment) to get so little satisfaction back.

If anything, at least it shows that Peli is a canny Hollywood operator who knows well enough by now that his cheap and cheerful, hastily cobbled together format will reap dividends for a few more years to come. Let’s hope an increase in profits eventually leads to more quality, rather than proving the law of diminishing returns.