Tag: 20120301

Review: Headhunters

Jo Nesbø’s novel is the latest adaptation in a cold climate to get an export, and is solid example of what not to do when things go wrong.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Headhunters (2011)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Morten Tyldum

Writer(s): Lars Gudmestad, Ulf Ryberg

Runtime: 100 minutes

Starring: Aksel Hennie, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Synnøve Macody Lund, Julie R. Ølgaard

Distributor: Rialto

Country: Norway

Rating: Worth A Look (?)

More info

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Thanks largely to the success of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, distributors are getting a little bolder in testing out Nordic thrillers on global audiences. With Norwegian author Jo Nesbø’s The Snowman due for a Hollywood adaptation from Martin Scorsese, Headhunters offers a window into his world as a bit of advance homework for what will no doubt start a whole back-catalogue of adaptations in the coming years. Although twisty and filled with cat and mouse chases, Headhunters is likely to thrill Stieg Larsson fan and induce knowing yawns from audiences in equal measure.

Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) is not a tall man, and he exists on the notion that he must overcome this in all walks of life. Married to the beautiful Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund), his role as a successful job recruitment headhunter is not enough to provide her with the life he thinks she deserves. So he leads a double life as an art thief, and his latest mark is Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a businessman from the Netherlands who is said to have a rare original Rubens in his apartment. Yet his attempt to take it leads to all manner of trouble when he suspects Diana is cheating on him and people start trying to kill him.

Like the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, another thriller set in a frosty environment, Headhunters is the kind of film that shows how things go from bad to worse when you try to put a bad deed right. Plotted like a loose thread on a sweater, things rapidly unravel for Roger as he attempts to cover his own tracks. Theft leads to death, resulting in murder and the needs to hide bodies, of course, and it all builds to a unwieldy series of events that disaster is inevitable. It’s a thrill a minute cat and mouse chase to be sure, but following that loose thread of a thought, the film wraps its bundle of wool up a little too neatly by the end, resulting in a fairly clean ending for all involved. Worse yet, it uses a high-tech deus ex machina to get there, which leaves a very threadbare garment when you dig too deeply.

Hennie’s central performance is quite strong, his overconfidence belying his insecurities and eventually giving way to the inner rage he feels over a continuing string of bad luck. Quite literally transforming in appearance by the end of the film, he is largely responsible for audience buy-in for the often incredulous turn of events that leads us on a merry journey through the darker side of human nature. Game of Thrones‘ Coster-Waldau is also impressive as the slick opponent, cooly giving off a vibe of smarmy.

The film is also beautifully shot by cinematographer John Andreas Andersen, who is has recently been impressing arthouse audiences with his work on King of Devil’s Island. Contrasting the crisp whiteness of the hinterland with the slick metropolis gives the film a distinctive vibe, even if thematically audiences have seen it all before.

[stextbox id=”custom”]A cracking thriller hampered only by an ultimate sense of familiarity and an all-too-neat ending.[/stextbox]

Headhunters was released in Australia on 1 March 2012 from Rialto.

March 19, 2012
Review: Sione’s 2: Unfinished Business

The boys are back with a brand new mission from god, bringing their distinctive Kiwi charms that are five years older, not much wiser, but still just as funny.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Sione’s 2: Unfinished Business (2012)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Simon Bennett

Writer(s): James Griffin, Oscar Knightley

Runtime: 85 minutes

Starring: Oscar Knightley, Shimpal Lelisi, Robbie Magasiva, Iaheto Ah Hi, Dave Fane, Teuila Blakely, Madeleine Sami, Nathaniel Lees

Distributor: Pinnacle Films

Country: New Zealand

Rating: Worth A Look (?)

More info

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Sione’s Wedding, known as Samoan Wedding around the world, was a 2006 comedy charmer that doubled its modest $2 million budget at the New Zealand box office, an impressive feat for a film that boldly explored the misadventures of four inner-city Samoan “boys” who were struggling to come to terms with adulthood. It was also the subject of a high profile copyright case in New Zealand, successfully alleging that a pirate causes a $500,000 loss in box office dollars, with the guilty employee of the post-production company forced to do 300 hours of community service. Undeterred, writers James Griffin and co-star Oscar Kightley bring us another chapter in the lives of this loveable crew.

In the first film, each of the boys – with a hard won reputation for causing trouble at weddings, parties and anything – had to find girlfriends before the titular wedding so that they would behave themselves or else be banned. Now they are all partially estranged, with the sensible Albert (Oscar Knightley) and Tania (Madeleine Sami) happily married, but struggling to have children. The usually argumentative Sefa (Shimpal Lelisi) and Leilani (Teuila Blakely) have got two kids, but Sefa won’t commit to marriage. Stanley (Iaheto Ah Hi) is training to be a Deacon, and Michael (Robbie Magasiva) has moved to Australia. However, when Sione dies, the Minister (Nathaniel Lees) once again summons them all together to find Bolo (Dave Fane), who blames himself for Sione’s death.

Comedy troupe The Naked Samoans are a bit of a national treasure in New Zealand, with the original members being the creators of bro’Town, an animated adult comedy that ran for 5 years and satirised the boys’ culture of New Zealand. The original Sione’s Wedding did this as well, effectively moving Kiwi comedy to the inner city suburbs of Auckland and showing New Zealand/Polynesian culture in a hyperrealistic comedic light. While the first film, like Sione’s 2: Unfinished Business, is lightly plotted, what it excelled at was in creating an endearing group of characters. As such, the real joy of this follow-up is getting to revisit the characters several years on.

In many ways, Sione’s 2: Unfinished Business surpasses the first film, with much tighter plotting, better characterisation and a higher hit-rate of laughs. The girls get more time in front of the camera, but this is still the boys’ film, but with the core group now the outsiders looking at the other groups of boys with the same satirical eye the first film viewed them with. Making a real effort to move the boys on in their character arc, the film sometimes plays like a page out of the Auckland tourist handbook, but does so with a sense of joy and high-spirits that makes it impossible not to walk away with a silly smile slapped across your face.

[stextbox id=”custom”]Sione’s 2: Unfinished Business is a cool summer breeze of a comedy that knows how to tread the fine line between comedy and pathos.[/stextbox]

Sione’s 2: Unfinished Business was released in Australia on 1 March 2012 from Pinnacle Films.

March 4, 2012
Review: Like Crazy

A refreshingly improvised romance emerges from a sea of tightly scripted genre films, showcasing the talents of rising stars Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Like Crazy (2011)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Drake Doremus

Writer(s): Drake Doremus, Ben York Jones

Runtime: 90 minutes

Starring: Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Alex Kingston

Distributor: Paramount

Country: US

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

More info

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Like Crazy is released internationally in the shadow of the Sundance Film Festival behemoth, where it won the Grand Jury Prize all the way back at the 2011 festival. While director Drake Doremus isn’t exactly a household name, at least not yet, his previous feature Douchebag also played at Sundance in competition the following year. For his third feature, he brings us one of his most personal stories to date, reenacting (according to Austrian-born ex-wife Desiree Pappenscheller) much of their romantic history.

Jacob (Anton Yelchin) and Anna (Felicity Jones) meet at college in the US, and promptly fall in love. After an intense period of romance, Anna decides to break her visa and not return to her native UK in order to spend more time with Jacob. However, when she eventually goes home for a wedding, she is denied re-entry into the US for having broken the terms of her initial visa. So begins a long-distance romance between the pair, testing the limits of their love and the very notion of what a relationship is.

Like Crazy offers an amazingly intense and intimate portrait of a relationship as it grows and fades. If the emotional reactions seem like genuine ones, it’s because they are to some extent. What is truly remarkable about the film is that while the scenarios were scripted, the dialogue and individual moments were entirely improvised. Actors Jones and Yelchin were given a “scriptment”, much like the TV shows in the vein of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where the scene had a purpose but it was up to the actors how that scene played out. Yet moving this technique from comedy to drama is a bold one, bringing the same freshness to melodrama.

This would not be possible, of course, without two strong leads and the impressive Jones and Yelchin are the very model of a young couple in love. What is essentially a two-hander, with the exception of a few people who drift in and out of their lives, is driven by their dual passions for finding the truth in these characters. The relationship is either doomed or fated to be from the start, begging the larger question of what happens when you do find the person you are supposed to be with from the start. The purposely ambiguous ending makes us question whether this love is just an illusion, as manufactured as the Go-Kart/beach montage that indicates they are now in love, but the relationships that they do develop with other people (including an incredibly patient Jennifer Lawrence) seem to be simply biding their time. On the other hand, could love simply be the ache we feel for something we can’t have?

Shot on the inexpensive Canon EOS 7D DSLR camera, a consumer level piece of equipment, the rawness of this imagery enhances rather than detracts from the realness of the scene. As Ryan Adams once sung, “When you’re young you get sad, then you get high”, and Like Crazy aims to strip raw the illusion of youth, back to these bare essentials. The slow and meandering pace serves to capture the frustration of aching to be something or with someone that may never come to pass, but having to keep on living regardless of what the heart wants.

[stextbox id=”custom”]A touching and genuine love story, told from a place of truth that strips love of its mystery and replaces it with the highs and lows of living.[/stextbox]

Like Crazy is released in Australia on 1 March 2012 from Paramount.

February 29, 2012
Review: Carnage

Roman Polanksi goes back to his apartment roots and lightens up a little bit in this star-studded observation of human nature.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Carnage (2011)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Roman Polanski

Writer(s): Yasmina Reza, Roman Polanski

Runtime: 80 minutes

Starring: Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly, Jodie Foster

Distributor: Sony

Country: France, Germany,
Poland, Spain

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

More info

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Roman Polanski is undoubtedly one of the most interesting and experimental filmmakers of the twentieth century, with Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown alone being enough to forever secure him a place in film history. Whether connected or not, the years following his highly publicised sexual assault charges have seen his career take a series of patchy turns, with only the highly acclaimed The Pianist standing out in the last three decades. With Carnage, based on the play God of Carnage by French playwright Yasmina Reza, Polanksi is back in in top form.

Following a fight between two schoolboys, in which one severely injures the other with a stick, the parents of the two children meet to discuss the issue amicably. The parents of the boy wielding the stick, Alan and Nancy Cowan (Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet), visit the home of Michael and Penelope Longstreet (John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster) and things initially go well. However, as the conversation progresses, irreconcilable differences begin to emerge between the couples, slowly turning on each other and their own spouses as an all-out argument ensues.

With the weighty themes of The Pianist and the mediocre The Ghost Writer dominating much of the last decade, it is great to see that Polanski still has a funny-bone. Indeed, not since 1967’s The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me, Madam, but Your Teeth Are in My Neck has the Polish director attempted something this consciously humourous, albeit a very black comedy at that. This is not a comedy in the traditional sense, but the humour comes from a darker place, one in which we revel in the rapid decay of civilised niceties between four otherwise typical middle-upper-class folk. Alliances are formed, couples separate and come together again, there is male and female bonding over tulips, cobbler, whisky and cigars. It’s a microcosm of society, of course, showing how one single issue can cause otherwise “liberal” people to rapidly change sides, but also that civilisation itself is an illusion.

The voyeuristic interest in watching the scene disintegrate is enhanced by the performances, which are undoubtedly the focus of the piece. In Waltz, Winslet, Reilly and Foster, director Polanski has assembled some of the finest Academy Award nominees or winners of the last few decades, and it is a no-brainer that they all perform their roles admirably. Foster in particular, in an increasingly rare on-screen appearance, does not mind making herself both physically and emotionally unattractive, screeching her way through an angst-ridden feature. Reilly, on the other hand, is remarkable in just how unremarkable he is for the first half of the film, before making a dramatic turn on a dime and revealing his true form. As the uptight Waltz and Winslet gradually unwind and let it all go, quite literally in the case of Winslet and to the detriment of several coffee table books, the versatility of the actors is evident.

The claustrophobia of the setting, harking back to Polanski’s own “Apartment Trilogy”, enhances the social angst and commentary of the less-than-subtle class struggles in the film, but it also betrays the stage origins of the story. Alan’s addiction to his mobile phone, Penelope’s attachment to her art books and the composed Nancy losing it when the contents of her handbag are spilled are all indicative of this commentary. This is hardly groundbreaking stuff, and Reza’s script doesn’t necessarily alter any preconceived notions we might have about these characters. Much like the quartet in the film, our allegiances shift and reform throughout the film, but we ultimately end up not too far from where we started.

[stextbox id=”custom”]As a performance piece, Carnage is a terrific showcase for its four stars, even if it leans a little too close to the stagey side of things. A nice comedic return for Polanski.[/stextbox]

Carnage is released in Australia on 1 March 2012 from Paramount.

February 27, 2012