Cate Blanchett, The Force Awakens and, actually, that's about all - Reviews #221

A couple of new films. One of them's Star Wars. My next three posts will together make up my review of the year. Yes, I thought you'd be excited about that.



*ONLY VERY MINOR SPOILERS, BUT DO NOT READ IT UNLESS YOU'VE SEEN IT. WHY WOULD YOU?*
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J. J. Abrams, 2015) - Well, J. J. Abrams certainly seems to understand what Star Wars fans want more than George Lucas does, because The Force Awakens is fun - and there's not a discussion of international trade tariffs in sight. Of course, it's only a proportion of Star Wars fans who actually want fun, lots of them want to be 12 years old and for it to be 1977, and are taking out their frustrations on this film. It's for that reason that I'm a little reticent to add yet more words to the incalculable number already written about the movie, whether citing fictional plot-holes (actually just unresolved storylines leading nicely into the next film), whooping uncontrollably or suggesting that George Lucas is likely to be spinning in his mansion. But then I thought: fuck it, it can't be any worse than most of the reviews on IMDb.

The film that's called most to mind by The Force Awakens, perhaps even more than Star Wars (or A New Hope, as we now apparently have to call it), is the Veronica Mars movie that was Kickstarted into existence last year. Though it was catering for a rather smaller demographic and came just eight years after the previous instalment, it also sought to pay loving homage to its original series, while setting in motion a new story. And though its affectionate in-jokes and its handling of its mythology and iconography were very assured, it had a little difficulty meshing its backward-looking fan gratification with the present day narrative. That's also true of The Force Awakens. But for fans, isn't that chumminess, that insider feel, allied to the novelty of new characters on a similar odyssey exactly what you want?

I am going to keep spoilers to an absolute minimum here, as with this one - more than any other film in recent memory - it's best to go in completely blind (don't worry, that's not a dig at Abrams' lens-flare festish, which I didn't see one example of here). But I will map out, in vaguest terms, the beginning of the story, in which a Resistance pilot (Oscar Isaac) gives a map containing the whereabouts of missing Jedi master Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to his droid, shortly before being captured by tantrum-y Sith trainee Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). The droid vamooses, falling by happenstance into the hands of scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley) and the mystery man who just crash-landed in her back yard: fugitive Stormtrooper, Finn (John Boyega off of Attack the Block). Then fate slings the trio into the path of one Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and his furball sidekick, Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew).

I really liked it. The film moves at a breakneck speed and delightfully jettisons the horrible, talky, po-faced nature of the prequels, injecting a heavy dose of humour and irony into proceedings. There's a sense of fun, of humour, of energy that I found really charming, and though it does have some rather obvious shortcomings, it's probably as good as Return of the Jedi, and parsecs ahead of the restrictive, boring, numbingly fatalistic films that Lucas has inflicted upon us since then. The main characters are perhaps a little self-consciously box-ticky, but in a way that I don't mind, because a black kid and a kick-ass, self-sufficient woman are still such a novelty as blockbuster heroes, and twisting the story to put those positive characters up on the screen is OK with me.

I also loved Adam Driver's performance; it's easy to be disingenuous about his character, but its inversion of the series' mythos is such a smart, simple idea that I hope Kasdan and his writers took the day off after coming up with it. I made the mistake of reading the IMDb reviews and the lack of logic there was quite distressing. Of course Vader was terrifying because he was so cool and calm, and Rey's explosions of callow rage are less chilling, but that is precisely the point of the character - and why go where we've already been? Isn't that exactly what the same fans are moaning about whenever the film looks like it's shadowing A New Hope? The decisions that it makes about his mask, his keepsakes, his ultimate destiny are absolutely spot on and create many of the film's best moments. As someone who's only seen Driver in Frances Ha - where he's a monotonous bore who can barely read his lines - and Baumbach's floppy follow-up, While We're Young, I was expecting him to be a weak link, but he's really the film's strong suit. In support, Oscar Isaac - as the extremely sexy fighter pilot Poe Dameron - and Ford have easily the best of it, along with Chewie, who's used largely for comic relief. Debuting droid BB-8 was fun too, if perhaps a little on the cutesy side.

Boyega, for his part, shows little of the dynamism he exhibited in my favourite film of 2011, Attack the Block, a movie that rests largely on his shoulders, but he is completely credible. Sadly the same can't be said of Ridley. Her character is extremely well-defined and does everything you want it to, but Ridley herself is distractingly poor, with wooden gestures, almost no emotional register and an inability to inject her dialogue with anything approaching sincerity. Less damagingly, but still annoyingly, the film is also saddled with several weak supporting characters: a crap CGI villain (Andy Serkis) seen periodically, who resembles various villains from the Hobbit films, Lupita Nyong'o's Maz Kanata - another computer creation, this time so inept she makes Bib Fortuna look like Gollum - and the various henchmen of the First Order (that's the new name of the re-emerging Empire forces), who in perhaps unwitting tribute to the original films are played by English people acting really poorly. And then there is Carrie Fisher, who I'm sure is doing her best, but I mean, really...

Those aren't the only flaws. For a film so hyped, so anticipated and so long in gestation, it doesn't seem quite finished. It's oddly disjointed at times, and the action sequences are inconsistent: thrilling and imaginative one minute, staid and formulaic the next.

But overall it does deliver. For great portions of the movie, I just had a big grin plastered across my face. It gets Star Wars, it really does. It knows how much we love the original trilogy, and it loves it too. That affection, evidenced by a million tiny touches, doesn't always blend seamlessly with the new narrative, but it does underpin and underscore everything that happens, creating an almost unheard of noise in the cinema (as well as the gasps and cheers): the wry, affectionate, fond chuckle of recognition, as another piece of folklore drifts into the story of these two young loners on an apparently impossible mission.

Is it as good as The Empire Strikes Back?

No, but how many films are?

The Force Awakens is hugely entertaining for the most part, and packs a powerful punch, along with a dozen great jokes and a handful of characters in the honourable tradition of the ass-kicking, stereotype-defying Princess Leia. And with Driver doing something new as Kylo Ren, and Ford in delightfully craggy (and unusually committed) form as Han, I'm really struggling to see how a Star Wars fan wouldn't like it. You know, unless they were trying really hard. For my part, I wasn't sure if Abrams could pull this off. I'm not a huge fan of his work, which tends to be derivative in the extreme. But here it seems to hit on something different, or perhaps that approach simply works in this context. While never skimping on the speed of the story, it's knowing, endearing and fuzzily nostalgic.

How can you not love a Star Wars movie where Rey's house is that? (3)

***



CINEMA: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015) - A small miracle of a film, about a quiet, emotionally straightforward shopgirl (Rooney Mara) - on the cusp of self-revelation - who falls in love with a middle-aged housewife (Cate Blanchett), herself careening towards divorce.

In 2002, writer-director Todd Haynes made the inspired, delightfully-mannered Far From Heaven, an experiment in which he created a melodrama in the singular style of '50s 'woman's picture' specialist Douglas Sirk, but dealing with subjects that were decidedly off-limits during the postwar years, like adultery or being a gay.

Here, he casts off the cloak of pastiche to revisit the era, creating a blissfully textured, stunningly authentic and seductively realistic portrait of love busting up through the floorboards of stifling conformity. From the bright, rosy, toy store interiors of a New York Christmas to smoky, wood-panelled hotel bars; from a taxi cab dripping in the evening rain to the identikit plastic kitchens of drab, repressive suburbanity, he and cinematographer Edward Lachman capture a very definite sort of Americana: a period of emotional torture and really rather terrific clothes.

Both Blanchett and Mara are superb: there isn't a false note from either of them throughout. It'd be easy for them to go for the big, grandstanding, melodramatic, Oscar-ogling performance, but it'd also be completely artificial. Instead, they just play the characters: with the certainty, the conflicted nature and above all the restraint that's required. Blanchett, with her vivid scarlet lips, is fierce, urbane, sad; the round-faced Mara sweet, deceptively steely and head-over-heels, but with her eyes prised wide open. Those aren't those characters' only facets, though: these are living, breathing creations who act like ordinary people, facing a less than ordinary dilemma. In support, Kyle Chandler is excellent as Blanchett's husband, but he isn't Blanchett-and-Mara excellent.

Perhaps the film's most unexpected virtue, though, is the stunning use of sound, which in turn bewitches, beguiles and disorientates, filtering its period tunes through eerie soundscapes to complement - but never replace or compensate for - the character's inner lives.

The only aspect of the movie that didn't quite work for me at first was a subplot about Blanchett and Chandler's custody battle, but that's probably more to do with my own prejudices than any shortcomings on Haynes and writer Phyllis Nagy's part. I was so wrapped up in the relationship between the lead characters that I wanted to see more of them together, whereas the movie is as interested in examining the broader realities of their dangerous relationship - and the penalties for their perceived transgression. This isn't the stock "I love my kid" device wheeled out by struggling, overworked 1930s screenwriters. Rather, it's what Blanchett's character would undoubtedly have faced in that scenario (minus one perhaps slightly over-the-top detail that impacts on the plot). And ultimately (minus one perhaps slightly over-the-top detail that impacts on the plot), it comes off.

The rest is just sheer perfection. If you haven't seen it, and you like either films or love, you should go before it leaves your nearest poncy cinema. How many other small miracles are you likely to find there? (4)

***

Thanks for reading.

Nothing Lasts Forever, Woody at his best and Douglas Sirk in the noughties - Reviews #102

"I like a Gershwin tune/How about you?" Yeah, loads, and there are plenty in Woody Allen's Manhattan, which wowed me for the umpteenth time last weekend. Also in this batch of reviews: further artful use of black-and-white in the hard-to-find '80s cult item Nothing Lasts Forever, The Academy of the Overrated's Michael Mann in atypically fine form, and The Gruffalo crashing a lesbian household.



*SPOILERS*
“I had a mad impulse to throw you down on the lunar surface and commit interstellar perversion.”
Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979) – This brilliantly-written study of relationships in modern-day New York was Woody’s first truly great film. He plays a neurotic TV comedy writer – surely not! – who’s dating a high-school student (Mariel Hemingway), but lusts after opinionated journalist Diane Keaton, the mistress of his best friend (Michael Murphy). The scene in the planetarium is a particular wonder, and Allen and Murphy's climactic showdown is a comic masterpiece ("'I liked her first'? What are you, six years old?"). But it's superb all round: wonderfully-photographed in black-and-white, scored by peerless Gershwin tunes and boasting a brilliant supporting performance from Hemingway, all building to a typically-inspired Woody pay-off: “You have to have a little faith in people.” (Smile.) Sob. (4)

See also: There's more stuff about Woody here.

***



Nothing Lasts Forever (Tom Schiller, 1984) – One-of-a-kind fantasy-comedy set in an alternate past (bizarre future?) and shot in the style of a ‘30s studio movie, albeit with vivid snippets of newsreel and stock footage, Bunuel, Griffith and Eisenstein. Zach Galligan is an artist (medium undecided) who returns from Europe to make his name and finds Manhattan locked-down by the port authority, in the midst of a 100-day strike. Cue adventures in Dada, highways management and moon travel, appearances from Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray, and a musical number set in a lunar greenhouse. Friend-of-Gizmo, Gilligan, can be a little callow as a lead, but here his slightly uneasy quality is put to fine use. This is a true original – albeit with nods to both Kafka and classic sci-fi movies – with a superb score from Howard Shore and a look and feel that’s all its own. (3.5)

***



*MINOR SPOILERS*
Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007) - This is perhaps Fincher's best to date (it's a toss-up with Seven): a riveting, meticulously-detailed procedural, with a few early excursions into slasher territory, that charts the investigation into a still-unsolved murder spree that took at least seven lives and consumed three others: those of an obsessive cartoonist-cum-author (Jake Gyllenhaal), an alcoholic journo (Robert Downey, Jnr.) and a hard-working cop (The Gruffalo). The script wears its rigorous research lightly, the direction is virtuosic and The Gruffalo stands out in an ensemble that doesn't put a foot wrong, though if the film has a failing, it's that the character drama isn't always as pronounced as it should be and does occasionally lapse into cliche. Still, it's utterly gripping, immersing you in the thankless, plodding world of police work - alive with minor victories - even if I find it hard to believe that a Joel McCrea fan and silent film cheerleader called Rick could possibly be considered a suspect in a crime. (3.5)

***


Al Pacino and W.C. Fields.

The Insider (Michael Mann, 1999) is a superb drama about pasty Big Tobacco exec Russell Crowe and how his life unravels after he tries to turn whistleblower for 60 Minutes producer Al Pacino. I’m largely immune to Mann’s movies – Heat and Ali are two of the most boring, badly-directed films I’ve ever seen – but here his domestic fixation and penchant for lonely saxes and scenes of people wandering on the beach at night fit the material perfectly, and his pacing and skilful handling of the narrative are reminiscent of Sidney Lumet at his considerable best, aside from the needless repetition of footage from the doc-within-the-film, which is a minor complaint. He’s aided by an exceptional cast – the hammy Michael Gambon aside – with Crowe unquestionably the standout in a complex part. Mann’s script, co-written with Eric Roth, is eloquent and cleverly heightened, though the alleged zingers they feed Pacino are a bit of a misstep – they seem out of place and they’re not funny. What is funny is the scene after the deposition, where Crowe is standing on a lawn in the half-light and he looks like W.C. Fields. He should have just run all the Big Tobacco bigwigs off the road and into a ditch, tooting his horn. Still, The Insider is an important, impassioned and very entertaining film: its engrossing story lit by fine performances. (3.5)

***



Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002) is an expert pastiche of Douglas Sirk melodramas of the 1950s - particularly All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life - that also stands on its own two feet. The gimmick, and there is always one where homages are concerned, is that Haynes deals with themes that were resolutely off-limits for moviemakers during the Eisenhower era, like homosexuality and inter-racial love. Julianne Moore is the smiling housewife whose apparently perfect existence is shattered by the revelation that her husband (Dennis Quaid) is gay. She seeks solace in the company of her black gardener (Dennis Haysbert), but it turns out that small-town housewives of the 1950s will talk... Haynes's florid recreation of the style of classic-era "women's pictures" is meticulous, the cast is uniformly fine and there's a terrific, backwards-looking score from Elmer Bernstein that captures the essence of the genre. The director's script is literate but admirably straightforward: particularly the matter-of-fact way it deals with the process of "curing" homosexuality, which is both insightful and genuinely shocking. Significantly, Far From Heaven makes a welcome break from the popular presentation of the '50s as a time of optimism, swinging hips and tailfins, showing it instead as a period of emotional repression and stifling conformity: the projected image defended at all costs against the stark reality. To get the full effect - and appreciate the dark humour of the opening reels - a crash-course in Sirk would definitely help, but I think you can appreciate the film regardless, as a deliciously mannered portrait of an ideal crashing quietly to the floor. (3.5)

***



The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010) – Entertaining comedy-drama in the Jason Reitman/Tom McCarthy vein - though from a female perspective - the lightness of the approach belying the amount going on under the surface, as lonely sperm donor Mark Ruffalo becomes acquainted with lesbian couple Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, and the two teenage offspring he never know about. The performances are excellent, particularly from Ruffalo and daughter Mia Wasikowska, but while the film certainly has its moments, it doesn’t always achieve the emotional resonance you might hope for, or expect. The way the inevitable appearance of Joni Mitchell’s Blue is crowbarred into the storyline, late-era Woody Allen-style, is also a bit crap - though the pay-off isn’t bad- while the whole film climaxes with a fucking group hug. Still, the performances make it, and it’s nice to find another mainstream-ish Hollywood film dealing with grown-up subjects like female sexuality in an intelligent way (you get to see one of Julianne Moore’s boobs at one point!). If you like it, the 1992 indie Gas, Food, Lodging has a somewhat similar angle on life, as well as one of the greatest performances I've ever seen, from a 17-year-old Fairuza Balk. (3)

***



*SOME SPOILERS*
The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997) – Freezing, powerful Egoyan drama about lawyer Ian Holm trying to persuade the folks of a small Canadian town to file a negligence claim, after the bus crash that killed most of their children. Holm is absolutely terrific and the sequences portraying his travails with his drug addict daughter are sledgehammer stuff, but the small town scenes are a little less consistent – helped by vivid direction and a spellbinding musical score, but alternately too vague or too obvious in the scripting. Sarah Polley, who memorably stuck it to Disney back in the day, is quite good in a crucial supporting role, though Tom McCamus doesn’t really cut it as her abusive father. And he looks a lot like Tommy Wiseau. (3)

***



Topaz (Alfred Hitchcock, 1969) – Hitch’s powers were waning when he helmed this overly static espionage film, centring on the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it is notable for one excellent set-piece, in which intelligence service pawn Roscoe Lee Browne liberates some top secret plans from a hotel crawling with Cubans. Elsewhere, some nice directorial touches can’t really enliven lots of scenes of people just sitting around talking, at least until Philippe Noiret turns up a half hour from the end and the plot goes all Tinker, Tailor. I did enjoy Frederick Stafford’s leading man routine, but the rest of the international cast is a little nondescript. The scenes on the roads around Gard du Nord feature some of the ugliest process shots I’ve ever seen. (2.5)

NB: Hitch's cameo pre-dates Little Britain by a good three decades. He's a fella in a wheelchair at the airport who rises to his feet to shake hands.

***



*MAJOR SPOILERS*
The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) – Interesting, lushly-made drama about a mute Scottish woman (Holly Hunter) who is to marry a man she has never met (Sam Neill), and so moves to New Zealand with her daughter (Anna Paquin) and her piano, but finds herself flung around by her unpredictable will. Bribed into sexy-time with the badly miscast Harvey Keitel, she unleashes a torrent of jealousy, finger mutilation and piano music. It’s a good film, with a setting amongst the Maoris that’s rarely seen on screen and an involving story, but it never quite hits the emotional high notes, lacking real resonance even as Michael Nyman’s superlative score booms and tinkles. Perhaps Keitel’s weird, unconvincing performance is partly to blame, snapping you out of the story just as soon as you’re becoming immersed in it. Hunter is fine in a demanding part, though the really stellar performance is by Paquin – particularly good as her conflicted, confused, constantly-singing little girl. (3)

***



The Cat and the Canary (Radley Metzger, 1978) - Ten millionth version of the creaky old stage play, in which family members gather for the reading of a will, but are picked off one-by-one by the cat-obsessed psychopath roaming their ancestral home. The film is awash with problems: it's far too talky, the plotting often makes no sense (always best to go off on your own to the cellar when there's a murderer loose, I find), the frequent wisecracks mean literally nothing and the younger cast members are terribly bland. But it is salvaged somewhat by the welcome presence of three old-timers. Wendy Hiller is good-natured and effortlessly charismatic as the knowing executor, stage legend Beatrix Lehmann gives a masterclass in absent wandering - playing the creepy housekeeper - and Wilfrid Hyde-White has an amusing bit as the benefactor, appearing from beyond the grave via film footage - a plot point borrowed from the George Arliss vehicle, The Last Gentleman. There are also a handful of nice, old-school horror shots. We see the killer looming large behind his unwitting victims, and, best-of-all, lurking by a bed to grasp at a diamond-studded necklace, like some magpie Nosferatu. For Hiller completists, it's worth a look; others should just check out the 1939 version - a fine horror-comedy that made a star out of Bob Hope. (2)

***



Chisum (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1970) is a lacklustre John Wayne vehicle, from the tail-end of his career, about real-life land baron John Chisum, who joined forces with Pat Garrett and shiny-faced hotshot Billy the Kid (Geoffrey Deuel) in the summer of 1869, to see off unscrupulous tycoon Lawrence Murphy. It’s well-shot and excitably directed, with a strong cast of Golden Age veterans (Forrest Tucker, Bruce Cabot, Patric Knowles), but it suffers from a weak story and script, and action sequences that are frankly just very confusing. Added to that, Wayne is phoning it in in the lead and Ben Johnson’s character is a joke for someone of his ability. You can derive some enjoyment from the fact that every time someone says Chisum’s name, it sounds like they’re saying “jism” (the theme song goes “Jism! John Jism!” and when he appears at the, um, climax, they shout "It's jism!"), but it’s slim pickings really. (1.5)

SHORT: John Wayne and Chisum (Elliot Geisinger and Ronald Saland, 1970) – Sycophantic documentary about the making of the film. It’s usually fun seeing scenes shot from different angles – and some behind-the-scenes shorts even show different takes or deleted material – but as the film isn’t very good, it’s not so exciting. (1.5)