Tuesday 27 January 2009

Butter Side Down: A Note on ‘Valkyrie’


By way of warning the dispossessed Colonel Stauffenberg about the consequences of his embryonic scheme to eliminate Adolf Hitler in 1944, General Erich Fellgiebel states that ‘When the S.S. catch you, they will pull you apart…’ Like dogs tearing at a piece of meat, all sharpened teeth and gristly violence? ‘…pull you apart like warm bread,’ finishes Fellgiebel. It does not help that the line is delivered by comedian Eddie Izzard, whose decadent camp dressed up in a Nazi uniform is the closest Valkyrie gets to examining the aristocratic, fascist excesses of these men. Unfortunately, after his threat that the mostly unseen and entirely unthreatening S.S. will turn Tom Cruise into a complementary appetiser at an Italian restaurant, Izzard is relegated to the sidelines of this effective but highly simplistic ‘based on true events’ tale. Cruise is his usual stolid dramatic self, sans – but not on the poster, natch – a hand, eye, and several fingers, and little is asked of him or the other characters in Bryan Singer’s slick but bland production other than to be cogs in the machine. Rather than impart the piece with an air of impending tragedy, this clunkiness only serves to reveal much of Singer’s conservatism and narrow focus. This is a movie about Hitler’s attempted assassination, and nothing else – the villainy of the man and his party is taken as read, and the only dramatic idea of note developed is that of the struggle for the soul of a country (perhaps a relevant idea in the U.S. of late). It may have been out of Singer’s remit to include anything but the slightest nod to the wider social reality of wartime Germany, but when this extends to a depopulated and stage-set like Berlin it begins to seriously hinder the work. In hindsight, Fellgiebel’s warning seems rather appropriate: Valkyrie is lukewarm entertainment which won’t spoil your dinner.

Thursday 22 January 2009

Round-Up of 2008


Two lists: 1)the best, and 2) those of which much more was expected, and so are more deserving of listing than “the worst” (the prize of which goes to Redacted); neither list is in any particular order.

The conclusion of this year of cinema-going? I need to be more adventurous. Only one foreign-language film, no documentaries, not even a plucky ham radio trying to make out with an iPod. Despite temptations to rename the list (“Large-Scale Hollywood Establishment Products Round-Up of 2008”) I chose to stick to my guns, and take the flak.
No honourable mentions here, but it should be said that Tropic Thunder nearly made both lists, and so got caught in an un-listed purgatory: the blame, for both, belongs to Ben Stiller. Also hovering between the brilliant and the banal was Quantum of Solace, in which director Marc Foster seemed to make up for the wholesale surrendering to Bournestyle by filling the margins of the film with unexpected delights: the regional fonts, the pill-peddling of Giancarlo Giannini, the sleekly swampy sound design and the J.G. Ballard-bothering desert finale to name just a few. (Please note that while Gone Baby Gone was only released in the UK mid-’08, it is a true 2007 film, and so is not included here as one the very very best).


The Best:



The Dark Knight
What can one say about this film that hasn’t been said a dozen times by reviews, articles, and conversations in coffee shops? A superb jumble of ideas and philosophy which somehow struck a chord with the entire country, being openly adored by people for whom the superhero genre is normally a punchline.

Appaloosa
Not only a showcase for some of the most majestic performances of the year, but also a literate and unusual film about semantics and specificity. A warmly affectionate piece of work which addresses Western mythos with an understated charm.

Franklyn
Due for a release in the UK soon (late February), Gerald McMorrow’s debut feature is at times stilted, but manages to create some rich and sombre alternative realities, and then just about keeps all the plates spinning as these begin to crash into on another in the final act.

Shine a Light

For the collection of incredible cinematographers working at their peak. For the unexpected explosion into full-screen twenty minutes into the IMAX version. For the witty, if stage-managed, prologue. Most of all, though, for the sheer elevating joy of the thing.

No Country For Old Men
For some a 2007 film. Also, for some, an excruciating exercise in cool detachment. To its fans, however, it’s an excruciating exercise in cool detachment. Simultaneously too faithful to Cormac McCarthy’s novel and not faithful enough, this is a brave, swiss-watch-accurate piece of film-making, only falling down in the more metaphysical tenets of the story.

In Bruges
Martin McDonagh’s debut as a film director was one of the unexpected gems of the year. Balancing darkly abrasive humour with metaphysical guilt and outright surrealism, In Bruges also boasts fine location shooting and three fantastic central performances.

The Chaser
This strange, hypnotic Korean film about an ex-cop turned pimp frustratedly trying to find the third of his girls to go missing is well worth seeking out both for the atmospheric visuals, and a script which is rich in subtle ironies, if not psychological depth.





The Missed Opportunities:



Taken
Liam Neeson playing Jason Bourne – what could go wrong? Plenty, it appears. Choppy film-making, a strong Europhobic streak, and some of the most unfittingly bizarre narrative choices of the year make Taken a frustrating and insulting watch when it could have been a first-class guilty pleasure.

Hellboy II
Included here only to mark the nailing of the coffin into my enjoyment of Guillermo del Toro’s cinema. Every time I get excited, and every time I get the same melancholic doomed love, extended central sequence of astonishing banality, clock-and-cog aesthetics, and irrational characters. Enough, I say. But that’s just me.

Max Payne
How do you screw up a heady brew of noir plotlines and apocalyptic aesthetics? Here’s how. That the unremarkable Constantine did it better tells you all you need to know, really.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
A film which, the more I think of it, the less I think of it. In telling the story of a man’s unusual life it succeeds finely, but in saying something more, something fresh, something sweeping, it fails. Perhaps this was intended, but for a Fincher film to evoke Robert Zemeckis seems like, well, a missed opportunity.

Body of Lies
William Monaghan, shame on you. We’ve come to expect poorly conceived but richly executed films from Ridley Scott, but your writing for him here is like an after-school exercise in Middle East suspicion.

Pride and Glory
Firmly in the tradition of other (both lesser and greater) corrupt cop thrillers, the crime of Pride and Glory is to offer so much and then deliver so little. Barring a completely unnecessary expository scene the first hour is bracingly shot entertainment, culminating in a fiercely believable confrontation between a seething Colin Farrell and a polite drug dealer in a frostbitten backyard. Then it all goes pear-shaped, and not even the brilliant closing shot can save it from ignominy.

Thursday 15 January 2009

The Myth of Central Control: A Review of 'Eagle Eye'

There is something deeply unpalatable about the ability of characters in recent Steven Spielberg films to survive. Thrown, bashed, lodged, stretched – they always come out with nary a bruise. Of course, this is no different to the action films of many other directors, but there is a delight and glee in Spielberg’s work of the dangerous robbed of danger. He only executive produces Eagle Eye (the directing duties left to the beige DJ Caruso), but his fingerprints are all over the whirling-dervish car pile-ups and conveyor-belt shenanigans – the only difference here is that they make a fiendish kind of sense.

We can maybe believe Jason Bourne’s survival through numerous collisions and falls because he has been trained for what may as well be an eternity and has the spatial awareness and physical prowess of a robotic big cat; it frays the imagination when James Bond throws himself into another fight by literally falling off a rooftop in Seville, smashing through a glass skylight and landing with a lucky thud on internal scaffolding; when Jerry Shaw, the hero at the heart of Eagle Eye, is told to jump from the interior of a car being swung across a dock by a wrecking crane and lands on a passing barge it is completely beyond comprehension. But this film has discovered a canny stand-in for the maniacal demands of a laws-and-physics challenged action-world – Jerry is being guided by someone that knows everything. It knows when the barge will be there, it knows when Jerry needs to jump, it even knows the tone of voice to use to make him leap at the right moment.

The discombobulated voice, portrayed with an amusing matriarchal streak of disapproval by an uncredited Julianne Moore, guides both Jerry and his fellow layperson-caught-in-massive-conspiracy Rachel through car chases, downed power lines, prison breaks and fighter jet attacks, keeping them safe as they drive eighty miles an hour through a busy urban street and somehow don’t crash; she insulates them from the things other action stars avoid through sheer dumb luck (and isn’t one of pleasures of these films the look of staggered bemusement on the hero’s face as the helicopter crashes inches away?). Through this simple conceit, Eagle Eye is able to ratchet up the absurdity of its near misses while also, laughably, giving them the sheen of plausibility.

In other areas to the film goes so far over the top as to launch itself from the planet like some kind of Baudrillard-inspired mockery of modern cinematic disbelief. The parodic casting of bombshell Rosario Dawson as an Air Force Investigator and hard-case Michael Chiklis as a pacifistic Secretary of Defence; the instant “witty” banter between the young leads thirty seconds after they meet and in the midst of fleeing several dozen police agencies; the grandly incomprehensible plot which shoehorns in Islamic terrorism in the most bizarre manner possible; yet all these pale in comparison with the race-against-time finale, which (seriously) involves preventing a ten year old playing a musical instrument. Thankfully, lead Shia LaBeouf has the right look of stern panic for this kind of business (the same cannot be said of the oddly drifting Michelle Monaghan), and the script is smart enough to keep him in the dark and obeying perverse orders for much more of the running time than one would expect.

It’s certainly not for everyone, and I find it hard to conceive of a situation when I would excitedly sit down to watch it again, but the very disposability and inconsequence of Eagle Eye may be part of the point, and perhaps supremely ridiculous fictions such as these will serve as a kind of tonic and re-adjust the focus of solid Hollywood fare away from exhausted trope of dangling, landing, lithe American bodies and back towards something with an investment in character and an awareness of the unpleasantness of injury, rather than the glamour of its narrow escape. Then again, perhaps not.