Tag: Better Than Average Bear

Review: The Grey

Liam Neeson takes his very particular set of skills, and combines them with Joe Carnahan’s own penchant for the grimmer realities of survival, unleashing a truly gripping tale.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”The Grey (2012)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Joe Carnahan

Writer(s): Joe Carnahan, Ian Mackenzie Jeffers

Runtime: 117 minutes

Starring: Liam Neeson, Dallas Roberts, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney

Distributor: Icon

Country: US

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

More info

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Joe Carnahan is not exactly known for his subtlety. His debut feature, Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane could readily be used as a description of his career, with Narc and particularly Smokin’ Aces throwing low-key out the window in favour of face-slappingly good explosions. Liam Neeson, once known for Schindler’s List and Michael Collins, has taken a definite turn in his career of late, and the pair’s ill-fated team-up on The A-Team could have been a career killer for both of them. Yet this latest outing, based on Ian Mackenzie Jeffers‘ novella Ghost Walker, brings out their best.

Hunter and tracker Ottway (Liam Neeson) is in Alaska, ostensibly to keep the wolves away from the oil-drilling encampment. When the plane carrying him and the group of oil-drillers crashes in the Alaskan wilderness, they must pull together in order to survive. Their efforts to overcome the adverse conditions are put to the ultimate test when they are targeted by a pack of wolves that are none too happy about these humans encroaching on their territory.

The Grey isn’t going to revolutionise the way you think about killer wolf movies, if you think about them at all, and this is certainly not the first time that man has gone against nature. Yet there is a rawness to The Grey that takes you by surprise as much as the wolves do in the middle of the night. Likewise, the scenery chewing Neeson of late has been replaced here by a contemplative one, a troubled soul given to internal monologues and poetry recital just as much as he is about crushing skulls. We never learn much about the other characters, including an almost unrecognisable Dermot Mulroney, but this is not simply because they are perfunctory in nature. There is an element of that, of course, but it is mainly because Carnahan and Jeffers’ script rarely pauses long enough for this kind of reflection. When it does, it’s because any tranquility earned is about to be snatched away.

Carnahan manages to maintain this air of tension throughout, sometimes with the merest possibility of a wolf attack. The speed at which the wolves attack is the best weapon in his arsenal, but the threat is a holistic one. Wolves are largely done practically, with unnaturally monstrous beasts a combination of the real thing, animatronic and CGI wolves. The howling in the background, often scarily close, sometimes builds into a cacophony of sound that chills to the bone. The only time when the film is less than gripping is, ironically, during the more conscious set-pieces of action, including traversing a ravine and swinging from tree tops. These are all fine pieces, but they start to take us away from the claustrophobic terror of the woods.

Either way, this is a film that puts both Carnahan and Neeson back on the map as serious contenders again. Neither have made as nuanced a thriller as this in years, and while it may not necessarily break any new ground, it does cover its familiar turf with expertise. Be sure you stay until after the end credits, as there is additional footage that will change your perspective on the otherwise ambiguous ending.

The Grey is released in Australia on 16 February 2012 from Icon.

February 12, 2012
80s Bits: Kiss of the Spider Woman

Welcome back to 80s Bits, the weekly column in which we explore the best and worst of the Decade of Shame. With guest writers, hidden gems and more, it’s truly, truly, truly outrageous.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Héctor Babenco

Writers(s): Leonard Schrader

Runtime: 120 minutes

Starring: William Hurt, Raúl Juliá, Sonia Braga

Distributor: Island Alive

Country: US/Brazil

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

More 80s Bits

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The history behind Kiss of the Spider Woman is almost as fascinating as the story on screen. Argentinean writer Manuel Puig wrote the novel in the mid-1970s, but found that El beso de la mujer araña could only be published in Spain. Banned in Argentina until 1983, the book is a stream of consciousness piece that is written almost entirely in dialogue and deals with psychological issues of sexual repression and politics. Since that time, it has been adapted into a stage production, this film and bizarrely, a Broadway musical. Leonard Schrader, brother of Paul Schrader, adapted this for the screen for Argentine-born Brazilian film director, Héctor Babenco.

The film concerns two men, the flamboyantly gay Luis Molina (William Hurt) and political activist Valentin Arregui (Raúl Juliá) sharing a prison cell in an unnamed South American dictatorship. Molina chooses to escape the boundaries of the prison by recounting the plot of a melodramatic German propaganda film he saw years ago, initially to the annoyance of Arregui. However, Arregui is soon pulled in by the telling of the tale, despite his steadfast vow to remain an unwavering political prisoner. Yet as the two slowly grow closer, it becomes clear that each is having a profound impact on the other’s philosophy and hidden agendas come to light.

How does one begin to discuss Kiss of the Spider Woman? Indeed, how does one begin to describe it? On the surface it is a film within a film, recounted by one character to another. It is a story about two prisoners trying to escape the walls through conversation, and the enduring power of imagination. Such an analysis is merely a superficial one, but the focus of the film on the conversations – as well as the film’s refusal to commit to a South American location or the politics of the land – keeps that focus on the politics and dreams of these two individuals. Except for the odd flashback and random scene elsewhere in the prison, we have no concept of what is really happening outside the four walls of their prison cell. Molina and Arregui’s cell seems almost deliberately blacked out to everyone else, with even their bars covered over with plating. The few glimpses we get of the rest of the prison show that this is not the case for everyone on the inside, and serves as a way for us to maintain a distraction-free spotlight on these two characters. It is a film about power, both sexual and political.

Kiss of the Spider Woman is a very dialogue-driven film, and one issue with this kind of film is that it has a tendency of feeling stagey. Kiss of the Spider Woman avoids this in some ways with the film within the film, giving the audience the same escape route out of the confines of the prison. These segments, often shot in beautiful sepia, lift us beyond the prison walls and convey a sense of the ideological views of both prisoners. Yet this is ultimately a two-hander of a stage piece, as the men talk out their issues. Each helps the other survive, and one ultimately gives the other freedom of a kind. William Hurt’s Oscar-winning performance, providing much of the narrative, holds our attention for the lengthy running time. Trivia lovers will know this role was made possible after Burt Lancaster dropped out of the production due to ill health and ideological conflicts with the filmmakers.

Somewhat dated by today’s standards, especially given that (homo)sexual politics has been dealt with more directly on screen since, but a film with a gay man and a Marxist as heroes would have been close to revolutionary in 1980s America, especially when compared to cinema’s attitude only a few years before. Indeed, as Vito Russo (1987) points out in the seminal The Celluloid Closet, “[In the 1970s] American cinema was unable to portray gay characters without their being sex-obsessed or sex-defined”. It serves as something of a historical milestone as well, being the first independent feature to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. At the time, independent films didn’t exist to the same extent they do today, where the likes of Miramax and Fox Searchlight have almost given indie films their own studio system.

The impact of Kiss of the Spider Woman may not be as large as it was in 1985, when the spectre of AIDS and death by the communists loomed large in the American psyche. Although neither speaking directly to either the epidemic or the Cold War, the success of the film in this climate is a testament to the boldness of its vision. Although somewhat stagey, it is also an example of true independent filmmaking at a time when it was actually a big deal for an indie film to gross any money let alone be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Anchored by excellent performances, Kiss of the Spider Woman remains much more than just a historical curiosity.

Kiss of the Spider Woman is an ambitious attempt at adapting a complex novel. While it may not capture that complexity on screen, the strong performances and intriguing narrative continues to fascinate.

February 10, 2012
Review: Shame

Michael Fassbender continues his quest to star in every new release, as director Steve McQueen returns for his first film in three years. The superbly acted piece is every bit as confronting as his previous work, in this snapshot of a sex addict in a cold world.

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Director: Steve McQueen

Writer(s): Abi Morgan, Steve McQueen

Runtime: 101 minutes

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan

Distributor: Transmission

Country: US

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

More info

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Dear Penthouse,

I never thought this kind of thing would happen to me. My name is Brandon (Michael Fassbender), and I am a successful and attractive man living in New York. I am a sex addict, and have random encounters with women every night. When women are not available, I satisfy myself using the Internet, chat rooms or anything that happens to be handy. You’ll never believe what happened when my sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) came to visit, and my otherwise ordered world gets turned into chaos. It may have something to do with a troubled childhood that neither of us are completely willing to face.

Sincerely,

Naked In the Big City

Steve McQueen‘s visually striking follow-up to Hunger, reuniting him with leading man Fassbender, presents itself with the same believably farcical distance that a Penthouse letter might. We are offered a glimpse into a world via a voyeuristic window, as tellingly indicated by the repeated act of the completely naked Fassbender circling his pristine apartment, and the film is not without a large dose of black humour. In the same way that American Psycho‘s cold and unforgiving portrait of a city gave rise to a slick and increasingly ridiculous series of violent encounters, Shame‘s motif is a series of escalating pornographic episodes. These sequences, from casually picking up a woman at a bar to an acrobatic anonymous threesome, are the stuff of fantasy letters to skin mags, the kind that most people dream of in their frank confessions. Yet as Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady) and McQueen’s script is quick to point out, there is a downside to this lifestyle.

Although highly sexually charged, relying on masturbation at work and home or even prostitutes, there is no passion or eroticism in his actions. They are the machinations of routine, and we never get a sense that Brandon is experiencing any pleasure from any of this. So fragile are these routines that when any change enters his life, he begins to feel it spiral outwards. When his work computer is taken away to be “cleaned”, later revealed to be the result of obsessive exploration of porn, Brandon’s professional persona is compromised. Even more compromising is the presence of his sister Sissy, who not only figuratively represents the erosion of his carefully constructed reality and is an intruder into his life, but quite literally represents the past he would rather suppress. In one scene, when Sissy accidentally walks in on Brandon masturbating, his ultimate reaction is a mixture of a child with his favourite toy taken away, and psychotic rage. On the flip side, Brandon is unable to sexually perform with the one woman that he feels any genuine affection for.

The slow pace to Shame is not so much a narrative as a series of contemplative set pieces to increasingly swelling music. McQueen treads the fine line between observation and soft core pornography, and the aforementioned threesome possibly hits the heights of this ridiculousness. Yet this too mirrors Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, numbing audiences to the increasingly nihilistic acts of sexual activity just as much as Patrick Bateman’s final acts of ultra violence leave the viewing wondering “Is that it?”. This is no cautionary tale about the increasingly casually sexualised entertainment we are subject to, but rather a character study of Fassbender’s Brandon.

Fassbender gives one of his bravest performances to date, and not simply because he lets it all quite literally hang out. Brandon’s most intimate moments are exposed, and this is undoubtedly one of Fassbender’s most emotionally fragile creations to date. It is just a shame he has been largely overlooked for individual awards this season. Similarly, Mulligan is unfraid of frumpiness in this part, finally liberating her from the meek mouse roles she has been stuck in of late. Both actors allow us to get under the surface long enough to get some degree of closeness, but the film keeps us at arm’s length, ensuring that this is an observational capsule of another life led in a large anonymous city.

[stextbox id=”custom”]Shame is a raw and emotionally confronting piece that uses sex to explore the scarred lives of two characters lost in the big city.[/stextbox]

Shame is released in Australia on 9 February 2012 from Transmission.

February 7, 2012
Review: J. Edgar

Following a few reflections on his own life and career, Clint Eastwood tackles the life of J. Edgar Hoover, once the most powerful man in the United States and still a figure of controversy.

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Director: Clint Eastwood

Writer(s): Dustin Lance Black

Runtime: 137 minutes

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Noami Watts, Judi Dench, Josh Lucas

Distributor: Roadshow

Country: US

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

More info

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Clint Eastwood’s career in front of the camera has only been matched by his successful transition to one of the most critically praised American directors of the last few decades. Although we don’t get to see him on screen as much these days, with the exception of the superior Gran Turino, his steady hand continues to impress as a filmmaker. However, with last year’s mortality-centric Hereafter, many started to wonder if the elder statesman was beginning to lose his touch. With J. Edgar, Eastwood is back on more familiar turf.

J. Edgar is told in a fractured narrative, one in which an idealistic but serious young John Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) yearns to prove himself as a figure of power. The film divides its time between the young man who managed to rise to the top of the fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigation, driven by his stern mother (Judi Dench), and an aged Hoover (still DiCaprio under heavy prosthetics) who has lived his life amidst a sea of lies and obfuscation. It’s an unreliable memoir, told largely by the figure himself, but not one without a justifiable bit of sensationalism.

With J. Edgar, Eastwood continues his late career musings on the impermanence of life. While Hereafter focused on the collective human (melo)drama, J. Edgar‘s focus is the legacy one person can leave behind. One the one hand, Hoover was seen as a pioneer in streamlining procedure , and the central organisation, processing and forensic analysis of evidence. The origin of the modern CSI in many ways! Yet he also had dirt on everybody, a paranoid man who used his power for his own purposes. J. Edgar the film asks the big questions about what is left behind after a life is done. Given the trajectory of Eastwood’s films of late, one can’t help bunt feel that he may be reflecting somewhat on his own life and career.

J. Edgar does occasionally get mired in the sensationalism, with Dustin Lance Black‘s (Milk, Big Love) screenplay choosing to focus on the major events in Hoover’s life. It’s a whirlwind tour from the Bolshevik Bombings of 1919 and 1920, where Hoover’s crusade against communism began, his role in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case, the famous bakrobbers of the 1930s (including Dillinger) and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Pretty much everything in the 1940s and 1950s get skipped over, but this is necessity in a life-spanning saga such as this. In fact, Black’s script manages to get a career that spanned almost 50 years into just over two hours, and the highlights reel is a powerful one. Some knowledge of American history is perhaps necessary going in, and it more than occasionally comes off as self-important, but Eastwood’s vision of J. Edgar is a compelling one.

The central performances are mostly top-notch, with the simultaneously persuasive and paranoid Hoover shaped largely by his religious mother, who matter-of-factly states that she would rather have a dead son “than a daffodil”. DiCaprio’s performance is solid, overcoming the gimmick of the excellent prosthetics and delivering a vision of a troubled soul in a position of power. For the central vision of J. Edgar is about the man, and not simply the major events that made up that life. Much of the emotional core of the film comes from his relationships with his two most trusted companions, his lifelong secretary Helen Grady (Noami Watts) and protégé Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), with whom the closeted Hoover shares an unconsummated romance. It is their scenes that are often the strongest, filled with knowing glances and longing touches, although these too sare sometimes hampered by some clunky dialogue and Hammer’s age makeup on the verge of melting off his face in a few unfortunate Raiders of the Lost Ark moments.

As the film has the biased narrator of J.Edgar himself, via a motif that sees him writing his memoirs, it is up to the audience as to how much of the film is to be taken on face value. The ultimate test of a biopic is whether we have learned anything new about the protagonist by the time the lights come back up, and J.Edgar brings us a few steps closer to understanding what drives a young man who is interested in card cataloguing to become the most influential lawman of the twentieth-century.

[stextbox id=”custom”]Although this may be a self-important biopic, and doesn’t have quite the scope of an Oliver Stone equivalent, Eastwood’s reliable camera shoots Hoover in a new light, providing a view of the politics of fear and individual interest that still resonates in today’s climate.[/stextbox]

J. Edgar is released in Australia 26 January 2012 from Roadshow Films.

January 26, 2012
Review: All’s Well That Ends Well 2012

The annual Lunar New Year event does little to change its formula in the seventh installment of this popular series, which is just fine for this very silly and charming romantic slapstick romp.

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Director: Chan Hing-ka, Janet Chun

Writer(s): Chan Hing-ka

Runtime: 128 minutes

Starring: Donnie Yen, Kelly Chen, Louis Koo, Raymond Wong, Sandra Ng, Yang Mi, Chapman To, Lynn Xiong

Distributor: China Lion

Country: Hong Kong

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

More info

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The Lunar New Year not only marks the most important and longest festival of the Chinese calendar, but a time when huge numbers of people are available to fill cinema seats. Every year, Chinese distributors have programmed the seasons with films designed to appeal to this broad group who suddenly have a whole lot of time and money to spend on flickering images in the dark. A staple of the season has been the All’s Well That Ends Well series, Clifton Ko’s 1992 Hong Kong comedy that combined the stories of three hapless brothers looking for love. With a few sequels in the years that followed, the series has become an annual tradition since 2009 – and it doesn’t look it is going anywhere soon.

Under the loose premise of a dating website that connects women who “need help” with men who are able to provide it, All’s Well That Ends Well 2012 follows four women who have each reached a crisis point in their lives and need a man to help them out in some way. There’s the aging former pop-idol who is trying to get her career back on track Chelsea Sing (Sandra Ng), and allays herself with wannabe rock-star Carl Tan (Donnie Yen) in an attempt to win a contest.

Then there’s the country’s most successful author of popular fiction, Pat Patterson (Chapman To) who is hidden away by his publisher because his look is not the attractive one the audience craves. When he begins to develop a relationship with an attractive blind woman (Lynn Xiong), he too finds himself hiding from her. The budding romance between a building labourer Kin (Louis Koo) and photographer (Kelly Chen) is more of a straightforward class struggle. Finally, there’s the loathsome attorney (Raymond Wong), who has estranged his own daughter, until he finds himself acting as “fake daddy” for heiress who is trying to pick a suitable future husband.

When compared with the cynical US equivalent, such as the thematically similar New Year’s Eve, the stars here might be used to put bums on seats, but they don’t simply turn up to take the cheques. The material is (intentionally) thin, in much the same way that a musical has to be light on plotting: if you go too deep the songs start to seem ridiculous. Such is the case with a broad comedy series like All’s Well That Ends Well, which requires a complete suspension of disbelief upon impact. While the central premise of All’s Well That Ends Well 2012 has a disturbing undercurrent of sexism, and by undercurrent we mean overtly over the top, this is undoubtedly not just tongue in cheek but a wild parody as well.

Case in point is Donnie Yen, playing against his action-man role as a broken rock-star, perpetually stuck in the 1980s. At least one of the photography sessions with Louis Koo and Kelly Chen seems to be a spot-on role-reversal spoof of a similar scene in Wayne’s World. Chapman To and Lynn Xiong’s section, although grounded in fairly familiar territory, is one of the strongest and the sweetest, although To’s performance is grounded in this spirit of parody. Modelling the look and mannerisms of the character on Hong Kong director Peter Chan (Wu Xia), the resemblance is actually kind of spooky, bu actually gives the actor a neat gimmick to work his otherwise straightforward romance around. Xiong (aka Lynn Hung) played a shrewish woman of wealth in last year’s installment, and here her role is a more pitiable one, gently breezing her way into the hearts and minds of the audience. Popular mainland actress Yang Mi impressively holds her own against veteran Raymond Wong, not only appearing in her first Hong Kong-style comedy, but reportedly memorising all of the Cantonese dialogue for the film as well.

As the title would imply, All’s Well That Ends Well 2012 is a film where the audience can relax, safe in the knowledge that nothing tragic will happen by the end of the film and all parties will be safely coupled-up. As brightly coloured as it is happy, the film is technically well-shot and shows a confidence in the format that only comes with seven chapters. As the film reaches its inevitable conclusion, complete with a Happy New Year message from the assembled cast, smiles will be bountiful. Think: it’s only twelve months until All’s Well That Ends Well 2013!

[stextbox id=”custom”]Easily one of the most enjoyable films of the Chinese New Year period, go into this with an open heart and it is far more rewarding that similar and more mediocre Hollywood claptrap.[/stextbox]

All’s Well That Ends Well 2012 is released in Australia on 26 January 2012 from China Lion. A complete list of cinemas screening the film can be found on their website.

January 25, 2012
Review: Young Adult

Diablo Cody proves that she isn’t just a one-trick pony in this disarmingly deep musing on growing up from Jason Reitman.

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Director: Jason Reitman

Writer(s): Diablo Cody

Runtime: 94 minutes

Starring: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson

Distributor: Paramount

Country: US

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

More info

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After bursting onto the scene with the impossibly good debut Thank You For Smoking, Jason Reitman has continued to go from strength to strength, with the more recent Up in the Air earning him Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and as a director. Yet the movie that became a major pop-cultural footnote was Juno, the debut screenplay from ex-stripper Diablo Cody. While both creators went on to better things, Juno was perhaps their weakest work, reveling a little too much in its own self-conscious cleverness to deliver any lasting impact. With Young Adult, Reitman and Cody collaborate for the first time since 2007.

Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) is a recently divorced ghost-writer of young adult books, who decides that she needs to reconnect with her small-town lost love Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson). The only problem is that Buddy is now happily married with a newborn baby, a fact that Mavis bloody-mindedly overlooks in her singular pursuit of her man. When she arrives, things don’t go entirely to plan, and she starts to come a little (more) unhinged. Simultaneously restraining her and enabling her is high school classmate Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), severely handicapped as a result of a misguided hate-bashing during high school.

In some ways, Young Adult is an American version of the British television series Nighty Night, in which a completely irredeemable character doggedly pursues a married man, who seems to remain oblivious. While Mavis is not quite as maliciously pathological as the lead in that series, she is undoubtedly psychotic, completely unaware of the emotions of the people around her, and misreading every sign from Buddy as a direct piece of flirtation.

When we first meet Mavis, she is perpetually drunk or hungover in her high-rise Minnesota apartment, her television permanently tuned to reality television and accompanied only by her small dog she calls Dolce. This is the most adult we see Mavis, having evidently held it together long enough to acquire at least the bare-bones of maturity. Yet as she travels back to the place of her youth, her true nature emerges and we discover just how displaced she is. Even as the most beautiful woman in a small town, Theron has never exuded less glamour (shy of Monster, of course), nor given as truthful a performance.

Young Adult broadly speaks to the identity of a generation struggling to reconcile themselves with the idea the world moved on, leaving behind those stuck in the past. Superficially, this is represented by the Minnesota locale’s trappings of bands Black Flag and The Breeders, ever-present in bars and on t-shirts, and Teenage Fanclub’s tune “The Concept” (which Mavis listens to obsessively) sitting alongside The Replacements’ “Achin’ to Be” as a soundtrack to the early-90s time and place that Mavis is stuck in.

Then there is the character of Matt, in an award-worthy performance by Oswalt, embittered not simply because his high-school bashing has left him physically deformed and unable to connect with anybody emotionally or sexually, but once people discovered that he was never gay, he was simply forgotten as another random beating. Painting and customising retro action-figure, and distilling liquor in his garage, he is just as much of a lost boy as the lead. The irony is, of course, that Mavis never looked at him once at school, despite sharing neighbouring lockers, and although he is the physical opposite of her, becomes Mavis’ closest confident during her early-life crisis.

Diablo Cody loses the conceit of tapping into a particular Valley way of speaking, preferring to mock it through the fictional novels her character writes, and for the first time speaks almost directly to the audience. While her characters have largely been women with an obvious socially stigmatised problem (Juno‘s teen pregnancy, United States of Tara‘s dissociative identity disorder), they have always been hiding far more personal problems. Young Adult‘s conclusions aren’t always satisfying, and it occasionally slips up in its internal consistency, but it will resonate with anybody who is still searching for their place in the world, even those who know they will never escape their predetermined lot.

[stextbox id=”custom”]Reitman continues his winning streak as Diablo Cody delivers her strongest script to date, in a film that is both very personal and universal. [/stextbox]

Young Adult is released in Australia on 19 January 2012 from Paramount.

January 19, 2012
Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Remaking a recent fan favourite may not curry any favour with the purists, but the presence of David Fincher ensures that this second adaptation of the modern Swedish thriller brings its own brand of slick grit to the familiar adventures of the girl with unusual hobbies.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: David Fincher

Runtime: 158 minutes

Starring: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård

Distributor: Sony

Country: US

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

More info

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Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Stieg Larsson was a Swedish political activist and journalist, exposing the activities of right-wing extremist groups. When he died of a heart attack in 2004, conspiracy theorists immediately thought the worst. Yet his story did not end there.

Amidst the debate over his estate, three unpublished thriller novels emerged. The first of these, Män som hatar kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women), became a hit in its homeland and was smash under its international title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Along with the sequels, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, his Millennium Trilogy has sold over 27 million copies worldwide. Now, for those who find subtitles challenging, David Fincher has adapted the novel for a second time in English.

Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), publisher of Millennium magazine, is convicted of libel against a crooked billionaire industrialist. Shortly afterward, he is approached by the elderly Henrik Vagner (Christopher Plummer), the ex-CEO of a large company and haunted by the disappearance of his great niece decades before. Always suspecting murder, Vagner hires Blomkvist to find new evidence in this very cold case. Unbeknownst to Blomkvist, Vagner had previously had Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) do a background check on him. As the two deal with their own problems, their destinies become intertwined and they begin to work together. Uncovering more than they could have possibly imagined, could there be more to this rich family with a Nazi past than there first appears?

Amidst cries of outrage over the audacity to remake this story, let’s remember that the original film wasn’t exactly Shakespeare. A non-confrontational walk on the wild side for the baby boomers at best, Niels Arden Oplev’s 2009 version was ultimately Midsomer Murders with tits. Yet from the stunning opening sequence, Fincher’s version is visually arresting, a stylistic piece filled with dripping black goo and twisted human bodies. Set to a reworking of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”, it harks back to Fincher’s days as a music video director, and immediately signals that the always envelope-pushing filmmaker is going to leave his own stamp on the tale.

[quote_right]”More of a stylistic remake than a new interpretation of the material, Fincher takes what we know and makes it prettier…”[/quote_right]Recasting Lisbeth Salander was an unenviable task, as Noomi Rapace is one of the real finds of the original trilogy. Yet Mara embodies Salander in her own fashion, an accented cyberpunk that seems ever edgier than Rapace’s original. She’s come a long way since she last recreated someone else’s role in A Nightmare on Elm Street. One Fincher’s quirks is that all of the cast, with the exception of Daniel Craig, adopt Swedish accents in lieu of speaking Swedish. That would require subtitles, and we already have one of those. He just gets away with it. Craig makes a much more charismatic lead than Michael Nyqvist, but then again so would a flattened cod. Indeed, Craig’s presence overcomes much of the flat feeling the original film gave as a result of Nyqvist’s non-presence.

More of a stylistic remake than a new interpretation of the material, Fincher takes what we know and makes it prettier, and also more manageable. The darker elements are all still there, dealing with rape, incest and bloody murder in fairly confrontational ways. Yet somehow Fincher never revels in it, choosing to use those elements as means of progressing the story rather than grinding it to a literally bleeding halt. Coupled with Jeff Cronenworth’s stunning cinematography, using elements of the look of Fincher’s own The Social Network and “The Perfect Drug” music video, Fincher makes the ugliness palatable.

The material is still uneven, perhaps the fault of the source, and lining up a string of occasionally confusing characters still feels like a parlour-room murder mystery at times. Yet Fincher’s experience with the macabre side of the human mind, and a pitch-perfect score from the Oscar-winning team of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, turns this into more of an event than it could have been, and lingers long enough in the brain to encourage second go at sequel The Girl Who Played with Fire.

[stextbox id=”custom”]Still unnecessary, and at times uneven, Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo largely gives the familiar tale a glossy new coat, but it is a beautifully ugly and more accessible one.[/stextbox]

January 4, 2012
80s Bits: Ghostbusters II

Welcome back to 80s Bits, the weekly column in which we explore the best and worst of the Decade of Shame. With guest writers, hidden gems and more, it’s truly, truly, truly outrageous.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Ghostbusters II (1989)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Ivan Reitman

Runtime: 108 minutes

Starring: Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Rick Moranis

Distributor: Sony

Country: US

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

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It is rare in the history of film, let alone film comedy, that so much talent came together to directly creatively influence the outcome of a film. The unprecedented combination of horror, science fiction, special effects and comedy was a winning one, but perhaps the strongest element to 1984’s Ghostbusters was the principal cast and creative talents: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and director Ivan Reitman had all worked together to weave one of the greatest comedy adventures of all time. Yet there was understandable reluctance to get the band back together. After five years, it reportedly took a four-hour lunch meeting proposing using the same team, but with a different story and characters to convince them that a second go at Ghostbusters was worth a try.

It has been five years since the boys stopped the minions of Gozer from destroying New York, but it seems that they got stiffed on the bill. Several lawsuits later, Ray Stanz (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) are now children’s entertainers, with Ray running an occult bookstore on the side. Yet when Dana Barrett’s (Sigourney Weaver) baby carriage takes off all by itself in the middle of the city with baby Oscar inside, she turns to the gang, including Egon Spengler’s (Harold Ramis) expertise. Of course, when Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) – now a psychic talk-show host – gets wind of things, the whole team is back together, just in time to stop the spirit of ancient tyrant Vigo the Carpathian (Wilhelm von Homburg) from sinking New York into the river of slime that runs beneath it.

Although Aykroyd and Ramis once again penned the screenplay for Ghostbusters II, the sequel is a very different film to the first. Where Ghostbusters tempered the more outlandish aspects with a workman-like attitude to bustin’ ghosts, coupled with an endless series of one-liners and visual gags, Ghostbusters II throws a little more caution to the wind in the fun stakes and tries to overload the film with all the good stuff we enjoyed the first time around. Contrary to popular belief, this does not actually make the sequel a bad film: a lesser one, perhaps, but then how does one recapture perfection? The second outing still innately understands that the Ghostbusters are just as much about the city of New York as they are about shooting and trapping ghosts, and the storyline is one that builds to not just reuniting the team but the whole city around the fallen heroes.

Ghostbusters II suffers a tiny bit of sequelitis, and given that the creative team were freely admitting at the time of production (and since) that they had never done a sequel before, it is unsurprising that absolutely everything is thrown at the film. The special effects, the scenarios and the monsters have all been taken up a notch, and there are times when it is almost a little too much, as if they were trying to find a place for every cool thing they’d thought about in the five years since the last outing. Yet the film sizzles during those electric moments when the Ghostbusters first strap their proton packs back on, or a callback is made to the original film. It is still Murray’s deadpans to camera, or Rick Moranis’ affable cluelessness, that garner the biggest laughs. During an epic courtroom scene, in which ghosts and beams go flying in all directions, one of the best moments is Louis Tully’s (Moranis) explanation to the court as to why the Ghostbusters should not be punished for accidentally causing a city-wide blackout. “I don’t blame them”, he motions “because one time I turned into a dog and they helped me”.

The sequel greatly expands the role of Moranis and Annie Potts, as receptionist Janine Melnitz, the latter of whom had given a memorable turn in John Hughes’ Pretty in Pink in the intermediate years. She is more Iona than Janine this time around, and while a subplot featuring a blossoming romance between these two supporting players may have been wholly unnecessary, it adds to the impression that the focus of Ghostbusters has always been about the characters more than the supernatural stories that plague the great city, county and state of New York. Peter MacNicol relishes in the slightly racist role of Dr. Janosz Poha, who in some ways mirrors Moranis’ part from the first film.

Having to outdo the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is no easy feat, and marching the Statue of Liberty down the streets of New York to the tune of Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher” for a rousing conclusion is certainly one way to do it. Ghostbusters II achieves the impossible, and not simply because it lives the dream of being set at Christmas but skips all of the stress and heads straight for the New Year. It is a sequel that may not quite live up to the first film, but certainly doesn’t destroy any goodwill gained from that first brilliant outing. Even if it does have a new “Ghostbusters” rap theme by Run-D.M.C.

[stextbox id=”custom”]Ghostbusters II is not the sheer perfection that the original entry was, but it is a fun and worthy entry to the series. With rumours still running rampant of a Ghostbusters III, it will be interesting to see if the magic can be recaptured over two decades later.[/stextbox]

December 30, 2011
Review: Tower Heist

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Director: Brett Ratner

Runtime: 104 minutes

Starring: Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Casey Affleck, Téa Leoni, Matthew Broderick, Gabourey Sidibe, Alan Alda

Distributor: Universal

Country: US

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

More info

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From Bob le flambeur to Oceans Eleven, the heist film is a staple of the caper school of filmmaking and a great way of making something incredibly simple a complicated construct. We’re looking at you Inception. With that in mind, it also serves as a playground for the people who like to stage things big. Enter Brett Ratner, most recently seen on the big screens with a segment in New York, I Love You but more infamously known for X-Men: The Last Stand and the Rush Hour series of films. With the recent controversy surrounding his departure from the 84th Academy Awards behind him, we are left with judging his latest opus on its own merits.

Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) is the building manager of high-rise luxury apartment in New York known simply as The Tower, and he runs the staff operations like a well-oiled machine. When top-floor resident and Wall Street billionaire Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) is placed under house arrest when charged with massive fraud under a Ponzi scheme, it becomes apparent that the pensions of all of the staff who invested with Shaw have gone as well. After a series of events show the formerly amicable Shaw to be truly wicked, and Josh has a conversation with FBI agent Claire Denham (Téa Leoni), the former employees including Josh and his concierge brother-in-law Charlie Gibbs (Casey Affleck), resident Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick) and ex-con Slide (Eddie Murphy) concoct to relieve Shaw of his hidden millions in safety net money and get revenge.

Pulling together a Ratner production seems to have all the hallmarks of a caper film, so it almost seems appropriate for him to have been brought on board for this high-concept retread of so many similar heists that have gone before. While playing like an Oceans Eleven for the working class, Ratner has assembled an impressive group of comedic actors who play both to and against their strengths. Stiller plays a surprisingly straight character, and not the typically highly strung type he has perfected in the Fockers franchise. This, of course, balances out motor-mouthed Eddie Murphy, who is on very familiar ground playing what amounts to a slightly more potty-mouthed Donkey from Shrek. Indeed, after a decade lost in funky family fare, it is nice to have the Eddie Murphy of old back on board.

Equally pleasing is the supporting cast, especially Gabourey Sidibe, who none of us thought would do much of anything beyond her Oscar-nominated role in Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire. Adopting a Jamaican accent, she goes for some easy laughs with a series of double entendres with Eddie Murphy, but makes for a nice bit of character work in a cast full of familiar faces. Matthew Broderick, who will forever be Ferris Bueller to us, continues his job as one of 2011’s comeback kids, also appearing in Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret. Drawing on his inner mouse, Broderick adds some old-school quirk to the affair and, together with the presence of Téa Leoni, takes us back to the giddy heyday of 1990s crazy.

[stextbox id=”custom”]Tower Heist may cover familiar ground, but thanks to a capable cast and a lightning pace, this is one slick caper that may not be clever, but it is certainly hilarious and a whole lot of fun.[/stextbox]

Tower Heist is released on 26 December 2011 in Australia from Universal.

December 24, 2011
JFF15 Review: A Boy and His Samurai

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Director: Yoshihiro Nakamura

Runtime: 108 minutes

Starring: Ryo Nishikido, Rie Tomosaka, Fuku Suzuki

Country: Japan

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

More info

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A time-travelling samurai who learns to make pastry? Yes, we’re deep into the Japanese Film Festival now with an adaptation of Gen Araki’s Chonmage Purin (ちょんまげぷりん). Yoshihiro Nakamura has gathered a solid following over the last few years, especially with the recognition that Fish Story and Golden Slumbers earned him. On the surface, the premise of A Boy and His Samurai sounds a little silly, but one could say that about so many films when stripped down to their basest of elements.

Kijima Yasube (Ryo Nishikido, TV’s Full Throttle Girl), a samurai from the Edo Period of Japan, suddenly finds himself 180 years in the future in present day Tokyo. Initially unable to comprehend his surroundings, he soon becomes attached to single mother Hiroko (Rie Tomosaka, Abraxas) and her son Tomoya (Fuku Suzuki). Yasube takes on domestic chores in return for food and shelter, but soon finds an incredibly talent for making desserts. Entering a local competition, all of their destinies will soon change forever.

The premise of A Boy and His Samurai would be enough to get it over the line as a curiosity at the very least, but it would also be nothing if not for the heartfelt writing behind the three principal characters. The initially taciturn Yasube overcomes the problem that most fish-out-of-water comedies have, in baffling their subject with mod-cons and then not knowing where to take this character. Infusing him with unexpected intelligence, Yasube becomes the ultimate samurai of domestic duties, folding laundry with precision and fussing over his cooking. The gives both the actors and the audience something to work with, ensuring that while there are some inevitable unrequited moments of romance, this largely steers clear of both rom-com and Encino Man territory. Likewise, both Rie Tomosaka and Fuku Suzuki are capable performers in their own right.

When the film rather unexpectedly takes a turn into the joys of cooking, we are treated to an extended set of montages of cooking. “Food porn” is almost a genre unto itself in Asian cinema (see JFF15’s Patisserie Coin de Rue), and A Boy and His Samurai can’t resist the lure of lingering long over luscious layers of lavish cakes and puddings. During the ultimate cake-off, a giant Edo-era castle is built out of cake, complete with tatami mats and little samurai, it looks good enough to eat, and probably is.

A pure joy of a film, A Boy and His Samurai once again proves that Yoshihiro Nakamura deserves to be recognised outside of his home country. Mixing time-travel with cooking is not your everyday event, but Nakamura somehow grounds this and makes it work within the context of modern Tokyo.

[stextbox id=”custom”]As fun as it is touching, A Boy and His Samurai is easily one of the feel-good films of the festival and one that should not be attempted on an empty stomach.[/stextbox]

A Boy and His Samurai played at the Japanese Film Festival on 26 November (Sydney) and 6 December (Melbourne) 2011 at the 15th Japanese Film Festival in Australia.

December 9, 2011