REVIEW: The American (dir. Anton Corbijn)

Cast: George Clooney, Violante Placido, Paolo Bonacelli, Johan Leysen, Thekla Reuten,

Describing a film as “directed by Anton Corbijn” gives a very different impression to describing it as “starring George Clooney”. While both phrases could technically be directed at ‘The American’, the former is much more accurate and the latter is slightly misleading. An Anton Corbijn film is stark, brutal, and pensive; a George Clooney film is energetic, entertaining (although not necessarily light), and the central character possesses an otherworldly charm that never fails to disarm even the most cynical of critics. ‘The American’ is certainly brutal and pensive, but it is very rarely energetic, and the central character is not charming or absorbing in the way we expect of a Clooney protagonist.

Jack (Clooney) is an archetypal ‘lonely assassin’, hiding out in the Swedish wilderness with his unassuming girlfriend. He is soon discovered, and the cold and ruthless way he deals with these intruders, and his innocent girlfriend, tells us everything we need to know about this twisted husk of a man. Escaping to Rome, his minder Pavel (Leysen) sends him to hideout in a remote Italian village and prepare for another high-end job. He befriends a wily old priest (Bonacelli) and slowly falls in love with a disarmingly innocent prostitute (Placido), and his enforced seclusion sows the seeds of hope in Jack that he might be able to find a life outside of ‘the game’. But he is still being chased by the Swedes, and the high-end job that at first seemed so simple (manufacturing a bespoke weapon for a German client) is becoming much more complex and dangerous.

There is undoubtedly an enormous amount to commend this film. Anton Corbijn is a masterful film director; he has a precise and well-honed sense of visual style and tone, and he is able to translate this into his films with a deftness of touch that is increasingly rare in American-produced films. Reteaming with cinematographer Martin Ruhe (who also shot ‘Control’) ensures that this film eloquently conveys the atmosphere of the story while remaining beautiful to watch throughout. The story obviously involves long periods of waiting with staccato moments of high energy, and Corbijn does an excellent job of managing this dichotomy – imbuing the slower sections with a languid and melodic rhythm that is punctuated by the tingling, paranoid energy of the few chase scenes and dangerous moments that permeate the film.

George Clooney is, well, George Clooney. He is one of the most undeniably watchable actors on the planet, with a strong range of emotions and a passion for filmmaking that somehow translates into his every movement. The problem here is that there simply isn’t enough for him to do. The ‘lonely assassin who falls in love’ is too familiar a concept to be interesting in its own right, and somewhere along the line Corbijn, Clooney, and writer Rowan Joffe forgot to imbue Jack with enough of intensity and conflict to keep the story flowing.

REVIEW: Adrift (dir. Heitor Dhalia)

Cast: Vincent Cassel, Laura Neiva, Débora Bloch Camilla Belle

Mathias (Cassel) is a charming, stubborn womaniser, and a thoroughly successful writer. Wherever he goes, people hang off his every word and cling tightly to his roguish smile and powerful character. His three children adore him, especially his beautiful, awkward fourteen-year-old daughter Filipa. There is only one person that has learnt to despise him, and over whom he has no control… his wife, Clarice. The family have moved to a beachside community for an extended holiday so that Mathias and Clarice can give their marriage one last chance. But Mathias is already sleeping with a beautiful young American woman, and Clarice is drinking too much and spending more and more time away from the house. The story of this crumbling relationship is not told from the perspective of either party, but is seen through the eyes of the adolescent Filipa, who learns a great deal about herself while watching her beloved parents tear each other apart.

Filipa is at that awkward age between childhood and young adulthood; she is vulnerable and just wants to be loved and teased by her father, but she is also dealing with the beginnings of sexuality, and the realisation that she harnesses great power over the rougher sex. When she discovers that Mathias is a philanderer, and loses faith in her spiteful and uncontrollable mother, Filipa suddenly discovers the most important lesson a child can learn on their way to adulthood… she is alone. But by the end of the story, when Mathias has been humbled by Clarice’s decision to leave him for a younger man, Filipa has matured into a young woman and is ready to find a way to love her father anew.

Heitor Dhalia’s film paints a vivid and powerful picture of a hopelessly flawed family. The entire film is imbued with a subtle romance, with soft focus shots of characters riding around on motorbikes with the wind in their hair, and relaxing half-naked on golden beaches by glimmering diamond seas. The only things that disturb this image are the characters themselves, with their broken souls and confused and selfish actions. It is easy to fall in love with any of these characters – the charming rogue, the coquettish girl, or the tearful, beautiful mother – but they will all disappoint you in the end, as they fail to keep check of their emotions and fall helplessly into the traps of their own making. This is a mature and thoughtful drama that absorbs the viewer into the world of the family, and leaves him or her as emotionally bruised and drained as the characters themselves.

REVIEW: Everything Must Go (dir. Dan Rush)

Cast: Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Laura Dern, Christopher Jordan Wallace,

When a young female employee accuses Nick of improper behaviour during a work trip, his history of drinking problems and failure to attend rehab conspire against him and he finds himself sitting in the staff parking lot, drinking cans of lager, and stabbing his personalised ‘severance’ pocket knife into the tyres of his boss’s muscle car. When he gets home, he discovers that his wife has dumped all of his worldly possessions on the front lawn, changed the locks, frozen their bank accounts (most of it his money), and left town for a few days to give him a chance to clear out. His fall from grace is completed when a company ‘heavy’ reclaims his car, and his cell phone is barred. Left with no options, Nick decides to drink the rest of his beers sitting in his favourite chair on the front lawn, and he doesn’t move for a long, long time.

Nick’s AA ‘mentor’, Frank, also happens to be a police detective and old friend who helped Nick’s wife kick the habit years earlier and is saddened not to have been able to help Nick in the same way. Frank buys Nick a few days grace by telling the local cops that Nick is having a yard sale, but Nick still needs to get his act together fast. He is helped in the reconstruction of his shattered life by Kenny, a sullen and inquisitive young boy, and Samantha, a beautiful and lonely pregnant woman who has moved in across the road in advance of her salesman husband (who sounds dangerously like a young Nick).

Based on the Raymond Carver short story, ‘Why Don’t You Dance?” this is a shamelessly quirky, heart-warming and sometimes surreal ‘indie’ movie. It combines Todd Phillips’ knack for fleet-footed, economic storytelling, with a more patient tenacity that allows the sombre subject matter to really breathe. The efficiency prevents the film from becoming a pretentious ‘indie’ flick about the suburbs; the patience stops it feeling like Old School: The Later Years.

Will Ferrell’s performance has received some completely undeserved criticism. Stranger Than Fiction proved to the world that while he might never be in the same league as Jim Carey, he is capable of starring in a drama without ruining it. His second ‘serious’ film is further proof that Ferrell has the dexterity and maturity to subtly tweak his characteristic brand of pompous but loveable humour into a more pathos-ridden dramatic style.

This is not a film that takes itself too seriously, but it is also not a ‘comedy’ in the strictest sense. The central performance had to be pitch perfect to accommodate these often conflicting atmospheres, and Ferrell does so perfectly. Apart from Carey or Zach Galifianakis, I can’t think of another actor around who could provide such a disciplined yet light-hearted performance

REVIEW: Blue Valentine (dir. Derek Cianfrance)

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, Faith Wladyka, John Doman

Every filmmaker, regardless of their level of success, has a script buried in a bottom drawer somewhere that they have been working on since their teens, but have never quite found the time to make. When these films do get made, they usually fall disastrously short of expectations (Aronofsky… ‘The Fountain’, Scorcese… ‘Gangs of New York’, etc). Derek Cianfrance has honed a successful career as a documentary filmmaker while harbouring this brutal domestic drama; and after a twelve-year struggle to bring it to the screen, it must be a huge relief to have made one of the most captivating and extraordinary films of recent years.

Dean and Cindy’s marriage is collapsing. It is an unfortunate and unavoidable fact for which there is no simple reason and no evident solution. Dean is a creative and keen-minded man who has – in the eyes of ‘society’ – allowed his potential to rot, in favour of dedicating himself to parenthood and being a loving husband. Cindy is a nurse who escapes from her sadness by pretending to care about her job. She resents Dean for finding it so easy to enjoy their basic and melancholy life, and for being the apple of their adorable daughter’s eye. Dean decides that what they really need is a night in the city, away from their stale environment, so they leave Frankie with Cindy’s father and head for New York. In a hideous, sordid neon motel room, the couple drink vodka and stare hopelessly at one another. The silence is penetrated with drunken bouts of laughter and violent sex; but when they awaken they do so separately, both painfully aware that they may never be intertwined again.

This devastating study of a crumbling marriage is intercut with the story of how Dean and Cindy met. Dean is a sulking, hopelessly romantic removal man who meets the quiet and distant Cindy while helping an old man move into the nursing home where her grandmother lives. A second chance encounter on a bus seals their fate, and they wander the streets of Brooklyn while Dean woos Cindy with his ukulele and Cindy impresses him with her tap dancing skills. There are hurdles to overcome – such as Cindy’s overbearing parents and meathead ex-boyfriend – but the raw power of naïve love seems capable of overcoming anything.

Cianfrance has intentionally made a film of dualities – old vs. new, video vs. film, rich vs. poor, youth vs. young adulthood – but the most important of these is the most intangible: love vs. apathy. The terrifying thing about the furious arguments that erupt between Dean and Cindy is the futile apathy at their centre. There is no love here, and no hate, just a glut of emotion, a vacuum that will soon engulf them.

Comparisons to John Cassavetes come at a price – it is almost impossible to fulfil them – but Cianfrance comes as close as any filmmaker this reviewer has come across. Jean Renoir wrote, "The saving grace of the cinema is that with patience, and a little love, we may arrive at that wonderfully complex creature which is called man." Nobody came closer than Cassavetes. His films were not so much well-plotted narratives as experiments in capturing human feelings on celluloid. His characters were broken, desperate, confused, and beautiful. But Cassavetes would have been nothing without the extraordinary actors that populated his films – including his wife Gena Rowlands and best friend Ben Gazzara – who poured their souls into his characters.

Cianfrance has allowed his characters to dictate everything about this film, gradually stripping away any layers of pretence and cliché during the immense twelve-year development process. It takes an incredibly mature and non-possessive form of ‘authorship’ to provide such freedom for another creative entity while maintaining control over the vision of the film. The film is undeniably Cianfrance’s, and yet it is so powerfully enriched by the output of his extraordinary stars. And in Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling he has found his Rowlands and Gazzara, and has trusted them to take the characters and make them their own. There is even something of Gena Rowlands in Williams’ scowling, sullen, achingly beautiful face. The Cassavetes comparison is also earned due to the bewitching, chaotic aesthetic choices. Sometimes the film is slow, faded and burnt-out; sometimes frenetic, vibrant, and full of colour; and sometimes menacing and silhouetted.

REVIEW: Let Me In (dir. Matt Reeves)

Cast: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Moretz, Richard Jenkins

Fans of Swedish horror hit ‘Let The Right One In’ were understandably anxious to see what Hollywood would do with the nuanced and genre-bending original. And their anxiety probably wasn’t eased by the news that ‘Cloverfield’ helmer Matt Reeves was taking charge. But his remake is respectful of the original while also amping up the horror and the budget for a US audience.

Owen is a quiet, defenceless adolescent who lives in a broken home with his unfocused mother. He spends his evenings staring through his neighbours’ windows or humming advertising jingles on a lonely climbing frame. He gains no respite at school, where he is mercilessly bullied by a trio of tormentors. In a country torn apart by high school fatalities over the past few decades, Owen seems like an accident waiting to happen as he practices stabbing trees with a newly acquired hunting knife. But then Abby arrives, barefoot, in the middle of the night, and everything changes.

Abby is a centuries-old vampire who has never grown beyond the age of twelve. She lives with a man who could be her grandfather, but is in fact a lover who has subserviently followed her all his life, murdering innocent people and draining their blood to keep her alive. Owen strikes up a friendship with Abby, who seems reluctant, but cant help enjoying the attention of someone her own age. They fall into a comfortable rhythm of looking forward to one another’s company (something that most adults call ‘love’, which is much quicker to say) and both are brought out of their damaged and lonely shells by one another’s hapless attempts at courting. But Owen’s tormenters are becoming increasingly violent; and when her old lover gets caught during an attempted murder, the authorities begin closing in on Abby.

Reeves claims to have been attempting a meaningful remake that stood apart from the original and made important comments on Reagan’s America. Well in this regard he has failed spectacularly. But in his heart Reeves knows that this remake has only been financed because American and English people refuse to read subtitles. And in his attempts to hold onto the spirit of the original while filming a ‘Hollywood’ version with recognisable actors and a higher budget, he has succeeded admirably. This is not a ‘shot-for-shot’ remake as many have claimed. Reeves has removed extraneous storylines and stuck to a more manicured style of horror filmmaking that will appeal to a wider audience. He has maintained much of the barren, melancholy aesthetic of the original, but in the moments where brutal, CGI-laden attacks are warranted, he pulls no punches and allows the blood to spritz and the gore to spread.

Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee are superb as the central couple. The greatest triumph of the original film was its ability to tell an adult love story through the eyes of 12-year-old children, and ‘Let Me In’ achieves the same success. Smit-McPhee was a fragile lamb in ‘The Road’, but he has harnessed that porcelain innocence and complimented it with a steely insolence that is quite captivating on screen.

Moretz brings an uncomfortable level of humanity to the character of Abby. She seems vulnerable, and tired of this haunted life. The point of the original film was that the vampire brought happiness to a bullied little boy, but in ‘Let Me In’ it is equally the case that the boy brings light into the world of a fragile and scared little vampire girl.

REVIEW: Another Year (dir. Mike Leigh)

Cast: Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen, Lesley Manville, Oliver Maltman

What I am about to say probably wont be news to most readers: Mike Leigh makes film by taking a group of trusted actors and creating characters and stories with them during an intense period of workshops. I always feel the need to explain this when referencing a Mike Leigh film, because it really is a unique and mesmerising way of making films, and it is part of the reason that so many of Leigh’s peers have been left bobbing in the wake of his awesome creative power over the years. His films are imbued with a level of detail (both visually and in terms of characterisation) that makes them as gripping as a murder mystery and as melodic and emotional as the most manicured Hans Zimmer score.

‘Another Year’ stars two of Leigh’s most trusted and accomplished muses – Jim Broadbent and Lesley Manville – and will surely be counted amongst his greatest triumphs when he eventually stops making films and allows the world’s critics and academics to look upon his oeuvre from a distance. Tom (Broadbent) and Gerri (Sheen) are a settled, late middle-aged couple who seem to have been together in their North London home forever. Possessions, as a rule, get more comfortable with age, as they get worn in and submit to our shape and movements. So it is with blankets, mattresses, couches, clothes, spouses, and most of the other items that clutter our homes. That is the first thing that springs to mind when you see Tom and Gerri (don’t worry… a character makes the obvious joke early on so you don’t have to) in their well lived in home. There is a level of comfort and solitude in this unassuming suburban house that cannot be bought; every doorknob, cushion and ladle has been loved and used over many years, and the house is now a cluttered and peaceful monument to a happy family life.

Tom is a geographer and Gerri a counsellor, and when they are not working or tending their well-kept allotment, they are usually providing refuge for a stream of less fortunate friends. Chief amongst this roster of broken souls is Mary (Manville) a nervous, squeaking alcoholic who smokes too much and decided to stop acting her age in her mid-twenties (a period of her life that ended many years ago). All of the characters in this film are wonderfully complex and realistic, but they all lend themselves so easily to anthropomorphic comparisons. Mary is a fragile but fiery vole, darting around in the reeds of a pond. Ken (an old friend of Tom’s with a penchant for saturated fats and canned lager) is a weighty beaver, tumbling over anything in his path in a giddy but ill-conceived attempt to impress Mary’s coquettish vole. And Tom and Gerri are the swan and signet – bound eternally with a calm but unswerving loyalty to one another, but possessing a certain aloofness towards the less fortunate creatures in their pond.

We follow these well-rounded and thoroughly entertaining characters through each of the four seasons, beginning in spring and ending in winter. This might seem like an awkward framing device for such a free-flowing style of storytelling, but it really works perfectly here, as we see how hopeless the characters are to stem the flow of time. Mary is eager to quit smoking, fix her car, and find a man; but as spring slips into summer and then into autumn, she reappears at Tom and Gerri’s home just as reckless and miserable as the last time we saw her. And these shifts in time also remind us how timeless Tom and Gerri’s life together is. If it weren’t for the changes in produce that they bring in from their allotment – and the fact that rose and barbeques make way for earthy reds and cups of tea in the living room – it would be difficult to notice that time had ever moved on in their sanctuary of a home.

It is only right that Broadbent should play the ‘father’ in this story, as there is something about the playfulness of the film that harks back to ‘Life is Sweet’. Many of Leigh’s recent films have had a darker, more sombre tone; but ‘Another Year’ is filled with hilarious quirks and moments that punctuate the melancholy of Mary and Ken’s loneliness and promise that, no matter how sad life may sometimes seem, there is always someone to turn to and some reason to smile.