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Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go: A Review

carey mulligan keira knightley and andrew garfield in never let me go
After eight years, Mark Romanek has directed another feature film, Never Let Me Go. Romanek has delivered on all the promise of his first film, One Hour Photo, and created a film that is utterly remarkable.
Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth meet each other as students at Hailsham, an English boarding school governed by strict rules. Their lives become intertwined as they move beyond the walls of Hailsham and from adolescence to adulthood. The film is a period piece love story that also has a bit of sci-fi mixed in. While the film takes place in the past, it is an alternate past where different technological breakthroughs were discovered. I don’t want to give away any more than that. This film is far too interesting to damage with too much synopsis.
The performances in Never Let Me Go are stunning. Each and every single one of them. Isobel Meikle-Small is amazing as the young Kathy. It is surprising to see an actress so young give a performance that is so subtle and reserved. As the young Tommy, Charlie Rowe brings a wonderful vulnerability to the character. You can see the emotions surging around in him as his body tenses or he throws open his arms and screams. Ella Purnell’s performance as the young Ruth shines through her eyes, which flash intrigue, understanding, and plotting, and can even carry an edge of cruelty at times. Furthermore, it is impressive to see these performances carry over from the children into their adult counterparts.
Carey Mulligan’s portrayal of Kathy is still subtle and reserved but now carries a weight of regret that you can read on her face. At times, she lets go of her control and expresses her anger and frustration, but still tactfully and succinctly. This a woman that would rather carry her burdens alone so that others may be happy, a woman that can bear great weight placed on her shoulders. She seems to have a firmer grasp on the world than those that have spent more time in it.
Andrew Garfield will break your heart in this film. The timid boy of Tommy still exists, as he is unsure whether he can accompany Kathy on a walk- even after having been her friend for ten years. And when he is given permission to join, bounces down the road, stepping in puddles, and laughing. He’s someone that lives with his heart, and sometimes his head can take a moment to catch up. But unlike when he was a boy, Tommy has learned to control emotions so that they don’t come bursting out. But Garfield shows these emotions bubbling below the surface with a look out of the corner of his eye, or the way his shoulders tense, or the slight quiver in his lips as he tries to find the words to express himself. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.
Keira Knightley plays the older Ruth. She brings a painful beauty to the role. Ruth is a woman that desperately wants to be more than she is. She claims to know more about the world than she does and imitates television to fit in with those around her. It is only when things come crashing down on her, that she can admit to herself what she truly is and accept the pain that she has caused. Knightley has such wonderfully expressive eyes that you can actually see the pain and longing and venom and anger swimming around in them.
The work by cinematographer Adam Kimmel is absolutely beautiful in this film. There is such beauty captured in the landscape or on a red ball laying in the wet grass or a lone boat beached on the sand. But the whole film has a level of desaturation that doesn’t mar the beauty but instead creates a fleeting nature to it. It is temporary and for that reason more beautiful.
Also remarkable is Rachel Portman’s score. This score may be one of the most painful and beautiful scores I have ever heard. Every moment is perfectly chosen, grounding the emotion in scenes in a way that work in concert with the performances and the cinematography. While the score can carry great emotion, it never becomes overpowering – the score doesn’t tell you what emotion to feel, rather it lets you feel your own, regardless of how painful or beautiful it may be.
All of these elements – the performances, cinematography, and score – create a very interesting and unique tone. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a film like it. Every moment is at once, beautiful, poignant, and tragic. Yet in those same moments there is such a level of acceptance and matter-of-factness that a sense of tranquility is established. After several days of thought, the best word I can use to describe the tone is stoic, but even that word falls short. Ultimately, the incredibly fascinating tone of this movie is something unto itself.
Romanek has crafted a beautiful, subtle, tragic film that I can find no fault in. Never Let Me Go is the most poetic film I have ever seen. Every element works in concert with each other, enhancing and empowering – they are all brushstrokes in a wonderful painting. This film is a masterpiece.

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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

The Town Review

jon hamm and ben affleck in the town

Ben Affleck proves with The Town that the brilliance of Gone Baby Gone was not a fluke. This is a smart director with a strong voice that is here to stay.

Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) is the brains behind a gang of bank robbers operating in Boston. His closest friend, James Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), works the crew as muscle and his right hand man. During a job, Coughlin takes things too far and takes the bank manager hostage. This is Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) and now she may be a problem. Doug takes on the responsibility to follow her and make sure that she doesn’t know anything. Now, it is Doug’s turn to take it too far. Doug talks with Claire and asks her out for a drink. He gets the information he needs to put them in the clear but decides to keep seeing her. Soon thereafter, he falls for her.

During this time, FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) is pursuing Doug and his crew. And he is closing in. It isn’t long before Doug finds himself caught between his old life with his crew and the new life he wants with Claire.

The first thing that has to be said about the film is its sense of place is excellent. It helps to have a cinematographer as gifted as Robert Elswit shooting it, but Affleck, having grown up in Boston, knows this town. You can feel the elegance of the Harvard area restaurants he eats at with Claire and practically choke on the grime of Charlestown. When an elaborate chase scene occurs during one of the crew’s heists, Affleck captures the claustrophobia of Boston’s streets. This is a living, breathing world. And with it comes harsh reality.

The action in this movie is visceral. It’s like a gut punch when guns are fired. During a car chase I found myself gripping on to my seat for fear that if the driver turned too fast, I would be thrown from it. Affleck does something very important with his action: he sets up a sense of place so that the audience has a sense of where everyone is and where everything is taking place. By clearly painting the world, he makes the action much more immersive and gripping. This sounds simple but many directors forget to do something this basic.

Affleck can shoot action but he can also put together a scene. The performances in his films can be off the chart good (see Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone for evidence). In The Town, Affleck places himself at the center of the story and handles the weight rather well. You can see the acquiescence to his life of crime in the way he carries himself and way he looks at the world around him. This is a man that didn’t want to end up here but, now that he has, accepts it. That is until Claire enters, played here with painful honesty and vulnerability by Rebecca Hall. Renner is great as the most unhinged of the group, constantly carrying a gun in the back of his pants – a ticking time bomb of a man.

Also, if you are like me and always wondered what it would be like to see Jon Hamm throwing junkies through glass tables and run through the street firing a shotgun, this is the movie for you.

The film does have its struggles. Claire and Doug’s relationship is interesting. They are two rather broken people. And in many ways Doug is responsible for breaking both of them. But their relationship isn’t given the time it needs to develop properly. It rushes along with both of them throwing out very personal information with little to no provocation to do so. That said, I will have a hard time looking at sunny days the same way again.

Doug’s turn also feels a little rushed. There comes a point in the film where a lot of information about him is just sort of thrown at the audience so that we can understand why he feels regret and why he would want to make a change in his life. His resolution is built up to be one of the bigger sequences of the movie but ultimately lacks any real tension. It isn’t handled as clumsily as it could have been but not as well as it could have either.

These moments being rushed seems to be a consequence of trying to move the pace along. It is a heist movie after all. Affleck may aspire to make it more than that but that is when the film is at its best. The heists are thrilling to watch and executed damn near perfectly. Occasionally there are some tonal issues, with humorous moments being played too much for laughs.

Affleck puts together a film that is thrilling and fun. He reaches for more than that. At times he succeeds. At times he doesn’t. But overall, he has made an incredibly solid film that a director far more experienced than he would have been proud to have made. He has demonstrated considerable skill with this film, showing that he can direct compelling dramatic and action scenes and that he can create atmosphere. If he keeps going like this, Ben Affleck could be to Boston what Martin Scorsese has been to New York. Because he knows this town.

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Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Last Exorcism Review

patrick fabian and ashley bell during an exorcism in the last exorcism


The Last Exorcism, written by Huck Botko and Alex Gurland and directed by Daniel Stamm, is a smart, atmospheric horror movie that takes a new twist on the exorcism story.

Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) is a preacher that was bred into the life from birth. But when one of his children becomes seriously ill, his faith is shaken. From that point on he continues to preach, and even perform exorcisms, but as a performance. He doesn't believe in any of it but it provides a way for him to make money to support his family.

This changes when he reads a story in the paper about an autistic boy that was smothered to death during an exorcism. Cotton decides to invite a film crew to make a documentary about him, allowing him to expose exorcism as a fraud so that no more children will be harmed. The crew follows him as he travels to Ethe a farm to perform an exorcism on Nell (Ashley Bell),the teenage daughter of Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum), who believes his daughter has been slaughtering his cattle because she is possessed. Cotton plans to reveal to the film crew all the tricks he plays and how he orchestrates the performance of an exorcism. But strange things begin to happen that Cotton cannot explain.

It would be easy for The Last Exorcism to fall into the traps of typical horror but it doesn't for the most part. Modern horror is about the jump scare or about grossing you out with incredibly graphic gore. What these modern films forget is that these things aren't truly horrifying unless you care about the characters. Too often, modern horror is populated by a bunch of characters that are so unlikeable that you are happy when they are dead. It is refreshing to see The Last Exorcism break away from this nihilism. This film takes the time to build the characters and let you get to know them. This way when the characters are put in these horrible situations the scares resonate more deeply because you care about the characters. You don't want these horrible things to be happening to them. You want them to get away.

This caring is also created by the great performances of Patrick Fabian and Ashley Bell. Fabian is really convincing as a man that has excepted the fraud he has realized himself to be, and instead of becoming consumed by that, he embraces it, takes ownership of it, and even finds humor in it. Bell knocks it out of the park. She conveys such innocence as Nell that you can't help but care for her. It is really impressive to watch the physical changes Bell makes in her performances between the timid, shy young girl that sits with her hands folded in her lap to the body-contorting aggressiveness of the possessed.

The film is shot as if it were a documentary, with one character as the cameraman recording the whole thing. This isn't used as a gimmick to try to sell the movie as reality or to set the audience up for constant jump scares. Instead, the filmmaker is using the aesthetic to help create atmosphere and mystery by not revealing exactly what is happening. This idea works quite well. It is terrifying to be locked out of Nell's room and hear her talking to someone and not know who that is.

I was very impressed with the emotional grounding of the story. It really comes down to being a story about the struggles of this family, which was surprising to me and I found it really rewarding. The ending of the film feels cathartic in a way that transcends the horror genre. Or at least it could have.

The film achieves a wonderful moment with the family and what I felt was the ending of the film. But then the film goes on for another ten or fifteen minutes and in that time completes devolves into everything it proved it wasn't. Random characters appear to take control of the story. And the final sequence features a shaky camera running through the forest at night - exactly the kind of gimmick that the film had proven to be above using. The ending isn't bad enough to ruin this film, it is just disappointing.

Overall, The Last Exorcism is a very smart, funny, and emotional film that has really wonderful performances and three dimensional characters. In a time when horror is stagnant with shallow characters, graphic violence, and nihilism, it is refreshing to see a movie like this that cares about its characters and telling a compelling story that will stay with you well after you've seen it.

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Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Piranha 3D Review: It's More Like Piranha 3 Double D's

piranha from piranha 3d

With Piranha 3D, director Alexandre Aja has taken a break from the gruesome serious horror of High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes and instead made a horror film that is a self-deprecating, fun time.

An underwater tremor cracks open the bottom of Lake Victoria, unleashing scores upon scores of prehistoric, blood-crazed piranha onto the unwitting co-eds that have arrived to celebrate spring break. Sheriff Julie Forester (Elisabeth Shue) is tasked with protecting everyone in the lake from the piranha while her son, Jake (Steven R. McQueen), runs off to play tour guide for a film crew shooting a porn.

That’s pretty much all the set up that’s needed for this movie. Basically, people go in the water and piranhas are in the water. And the piranhas like to eat people.

The movie opens with a great scene that would seemingly set up the pace and tone of the film but is actually misleading. After the opening kill sequence there is a solid twenty to thirty minutes of waiting. It is almost as if Aja wanted to set up all the characters before the piranha killing spree began. This would be great if all the characters weren’t shallow stock clichés. To be clear here, my complaint isn’t the shallowness of the characters but that too much time passes between piranha kill scenes.

However, Aja definitely makes up for it with a brilliant fifteen to twenty minute long sequence of complete slaughter during a wet t-shirt contest. This sequence is wonderfully designed because Aja actually comes up with things for people to do. It isn’t just cut to death, cut to death, cut to death. Instead, the people try all kinds of ways to get away from the piranha and these plans backfire in horrific, gorey ways.

Unfortunately, the climax is not nearly as satisfying. The action in the final sequence is good, but it lacks the inventiveness of the wet t-shirt slaughter, and so it feels less satisfying. Also, at the end of the sequence it feels as if the film is setting itself up for several more scenes and then abruptly ends. It’s almost as if Aja ran out of money and had to just end the movie.

I feel that I should address the 3D in the movie as it is part of the title. The 3D is okay. It is not as bad as other post-conversions…most of the time. Several times, parts of scenes would be completely out of focus and unwatchable. Also, a lot of the underwater footage of the piranhas attacking is completely incomprehensible. It is just a lot of out of focus motion and red water. However, Aja does deliver boobs in 3D. And a lot of them. So there is that.

This is the kind of movie for people who wondered what Dr. Emmett Brown would be like in a horror flick, which is exactly the role Christopher Lloyd plays as the fish expert. This is the kind of movie that will put a bikini-clad college girl in the water and let her hair get caught in the propeller of a boat. Then it will let that motor start and tear all the skin off that girl’s face. This is the kind of movie that lets two female porn stars swim naked underwater and make out. For nearly five minutes.

What is Piranha 3D? It is completely shallow, horrific, bloody fun.

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Sunday, September 12, 2010

The Kids Are All Right Review: The Kids Are All Right is....Well...All Right

annette bening julianne moore mark ruffalo josh hutcherson and mia wasikowska sitting at picnic table in the kids are all right

Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right is a fun, truthful portrait of an alternative family that, in a very refreshing turn, never places exploring the sexuality of the characters above telling a worthwhile story.

Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are a lesbian couple with two teenaged kids, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson). Joni and Laser are half-siblings, as both their mothers used the same sperm donor to conceive. Laser really wants to meet his biological father but is too young to contact the sperm bank. So he convinces Joni, who is eighteen, to do it. The bank puts them in touch and Joni and Laser go to meet Paul (Mark Ruffalo), their sperm donor, without the knowledge of their mothers. Paul connects with the kids and wants to spend more time with them. As Paul is introduced into the life of the family, he throws off the balance and forces them to deal with issues that have been living beneath the surface.

The real shining element in this film are the performances. Annette Bening is wonderful as a controlling mother trying to keep a firm grasp on a life that is changing in all kinds of ways. Julianne Moore is fantastic as a free spirit hippie chick that is the complete opposite of Nic and a great counterbalance to her. It is also a joy to watch Mark Ruffalo in this movie. As of late, Ruffalo's roles have been mostly somber dramatic pieces. With the role of Paul, an organic, locavore farmer and restauranteur, he seems to be having so much fun playing the alternative, crunchy granola character. Both Wasikowska and Hutcherson do a great job with the parts they have been given as the children in this family drama.

And that is precisely what this movie is: a family drama. It isn't a gay family drama. This is a very refreshing notion. So often, these stories about homosexual lifestyles focus more on the lifestyle than on the story at hand. The Kids Are All Right doesn't do this. It acknowledges that characters are gay and then moves on without a second thought. The story isn't about whether or not these kids need a man in their life, it is about two parents trying to deal with the changing lives of their two teenage children. These are universal struggles. Nic and Jules deal with the same problems that any heterosexual parents would have to deal with. It was really refreshing to see a story that shows us how we are all the same instead of how we are all different, uniting instead of dividing.

Although, the film does drift into stereotype several times. However, not stereotypes of homosexuality but of alternative lifestyles. For instance, the daughter is named Joni and there is actually a backstory given to her name, but the son is named Laser. Laser. And no backstory is ever given on this name. It comes off as if Cholodenko was operating under the notion that these characters live alternative to the mainstream so, of course, they would name their kid something odd like Laser. Perhaps, it was supposed to be played for laughs but that kind of obvious, on the nose joke is below this film. Also, as much fun as it is to watch Ruffalo, his character can come of as parody a little too strongly at times.

It is worth noting that the complaints I have voiced are centered around the male characters. In truth, the male characters are handle pretty poorly in this film. Ruffalo has a large part but, ultimately, is hung out to try when it comes to the resolution of his character. He is left stranded in a way that is unsatisfying for the story as a whole. But he fairs much better than the son. Laser is a completely wasted character. After being the impetus to find Paul and bring him into their lives, he nearly vanishes for the story. There is very little insight into the inner life of the character. He seems sort of upset sometimes, but it is never quite clear what about. There are a few scenes of just Laser and Paul interacting one on one but nothing really ever comes of these interactions. They feel as if they are inserted through obligation rather than necessity.

The complete opposite is true of Joni. Joni is given a very rich relationship with Paul, a relationship that stimulates growth and makes her begin to come into her own as a young adult headed for college. Joni's thoughts and frustrations and anger and curiosities and alive in rich detail, making the shallowness of Laser even more apparent and disappointing.

But this is film co-written and directed by a woman, Lisa Cholodenko, bringing her insight on life from a woman's perspective. And the woman in this film are all unique, richly developed, three dimensional characters. In a cinematic world where women characters are so often shallow and underdeveloped, I can hardly fault Cholodenko for choosing to give that treatment to the men in favor of developing the women.

The Kids Are All Right is a film that is quite funny and really enjoyable. It has moments of great dramatic tension but balances those out fairly well with the humor. Ultimately, it is a film that feels very truthful to the struggles that all families must face, and in facing them, become a stronger, closer unit. Regardless of who the parents are.

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