REVIEW: Casa de mi Padre (dir. Matt Piedmont)

Cast: Will Ferrell, Diego Luna, Gael Garcia Bernal, Genesis Rodriguez

To make fun of a genre film, you really have to love the genre. When you watch Blazing Saddles - or Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood - it feels like the filmmakers are ribbing a dear old friend, rather than spitting on a hated foe. When you watch the later Scary Movies there is no joy to be had, because the passion for horror cinema has disappeared. Fortunately, by the end of the opening scene of Casa de mi Padre, we are left in no doubt that Matt Piedmont and his gang of talented artistes have an unabashed passion for the trashy Mexican Westerns of the 1950s and 60s. I don’t know if it’s the intentionally disastrous continuity errors, the badly painted backdrops, or the fact that Will Ferrell speaks in seemingly fluent Spanish… but something tells you that these guys really love what they’re doing. Maybe too much.

Armando Alvarez (Ferrell) is, as his father regularly points out, not the sharpest nacho on the platter. Compared to his recently returned prodigal brother, Raul (Luna) – a sharp-suited, slick-haired lothario – well, let’s just say you wouldn’t leave Armando alone to pet your rabbit (and if you think that’s some sordid analogy, you need to read Of Mice and Men… immediately). Raul’s return from Mexico City, and the announcement of his engagement to the jaw-dropping Sonia (Rodriguez), are greeted with screams of praise from the entire Alvarez ranch… finally Raul has returned to save the family!

Unfortunately, Raul didn’t make his money the hard way in the city. He’s a major drug baron with a long list of enemies, and his return to the family ranch brings unwanted attention from the local drug lord Onza (Garcia Bernal), who also happens to be Sonia’s uncle. When Armando discovers that his brother is a no good gangster, he realises his time has come to take the mantle of hero and patriarch, and save his family from the wolves and coyotes gathering at the gates.

If that brief synopsis sounds melodramatic then I’ve still probably underdone it! This is easily as uproariously clichéd and on-the-nose as any of the wonderful B-movies from that era. This is pure send-up, pure farce. You’re never allowed to settle into the story and start the laborious process of “caring” about the characters, because every time you start down that road, Garcia Bernal sticks three cigarettes in his mouth at once, of Ferrell attempts to help a lady onto a horse but gives up halfway and leaves her hanging awkwardly off the side. It’s a mad-dash slapstick caper with wonderfully shoddy sets and intentional ham acting.

Of course, being objective, that’s as much a tick in the ‘con’ box as it is in the ‘pro’. There’s plenty of room for fun in a film with some heart, and removing all the emotional depth from any human story – no matter how melodramatic and funny – is a shame. But at a trim 84-minutes, there’s plenty to keep us entertained and I can’t imagine anybody leaving the cinema dissatisfied.

And the whole production actually works as a new canvas for the wonderful Will Ferrell. We’ve seen him in his own projects and in a few great dramas in recent years, but this is the first time we’ve seen him in a feature film that is as surreal and farcical as his early SNL sketches. The camp madness that surrounds him here lends his grumpy upturned smile, shifting bear-like eyebrows, and twinkly blue eyes a strangely mature and sturdy edge. Compared to everything around him, he seems to be underacting! It’s an interesting and enjoyable spectacle.

REVIEW: American Reunion (dir. Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg)

Cast: Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Chris Klein, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Tara Reid, Seann William Scott, Mena Suvari, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Eugene Levy, Jennifer Coolidge,

Ten years after that fateful, ‘virginity-busting’ prom night… nothing happened. There was probably some sort of reunion, but Jim, Kevin, Oz, and the rest of the gang were too content in their lives to dig up any of those old feelings and memories. Three years later, however, and everybody is miserable: Jim and Michelle’s leporine flame has been extinguished by the arrival of their first child; Kevin, now a full-time househusband, is too scared to tell his wife how much he hates reality TV; and Oz presents a sports newscast and has the ditsy pin-up girlfriend to prove it (she’s a queen bitch, and couldn’t be less suited to our rugged, cuddly lacrosse star.)

It’s clear a trip back home is exactly what the boys need to get a bit of perspective on their lives. Fortunately, that all-important 13th High School Reunion has arrived – what a great excuse to get the old band back together!

Finch arrives before they’ve even entered their first bar: screeching up the street on a supercharged motorcycle with tales of his adventures in Latin rainforests. Shortly after, they run into the one person they’d hoped to avoid… Stifler. Ah, Stifler: still living at home with his slutty mother, and even as an office temp he manages to wreak havoc wherever he turns. The moment he arrives the shots start flowing, and we sense that everything is slipping out of control in much the same way it did thirteen years ago.

That’s all I’ll give you in prose, but here’s a little list of buzzwords to whet your appetite: an 18th birthday party by a lake, more awkward conversations with Jim’s dad, bondage gear, taking a dump in a beer cooler, more awkward moments in Jim’s kitchen, MILF chants, waking up next to Vicky, waking up next to Heather, waking up next to Stifler’s mum (Eugene Levy, you dawg!), realising you’re not in High School anymore and it’s time to grow up, waking up next to Finch’s mum.

Well, that about covers it. There is nothing new here: nothing progressive in the script, nothing original in the comedy or performances, nothing complicated in the narrative. But it’s not a ‘new’ film… it’s a reunion! You can sense it as soon as you glance around the cinema at all the other late-twentysomethings giggling with glee and remembering all the naughty little things they did in their teens, after they first saw American Pie. Anyone who remembers the heady teen thrills of the original film can’t help but feel a pang of nostalgia the moment Jim wanders into his childhood bedroom. It’s a treasure to revisit a place with so many fond memories, even if the memories aren’t technically real… or ours.

REVIEW: Contraband (dir. Baltasar Kormákur)

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster, Kate Beckinsale, Giovanni Ribisi, Lucas Haas, Diego Luna

Getting out of the game… it’s so hard, it almost makes you not want to get into the game in the first place. If Carlito and Michael Corleone couldn’t work it out then nobody ever will. In Baltasar Kormákur’s Contraband, Mark Walhberg plays Chris Farraday: a major smuggler transporting drugs and counterfeit money into the impenetrable USofA via the world’s major cargo lines. But... ah blast! He’s just done his last job, and we missed it. Ah well, everybody out of your seats, lets see what’s showing on screen sev... wait... what’s this? Farraday’s cowardly little brother-in-law just got himself into trouble with the biggest gangster in New Orleans? and now Chris has to dive back “into the game” to save the youngster’s life? Well, it looks like we’ve got a bit of a film on our hands after all.

So here we are: a reluctant criminal mastermind has reassembled his trusted crack team to bring in “one last heist” to save the life of his little brother. If Gone in Sixty Seconds was Speed, then this is Speed 2: it’s the same story… just on a massive boat. Fortunately for us, this is no shimmering ocean cruiser: it’s a hulking, rusted leviathan full of shifty-eyed dock workers and a pompous captain with a thick Southern drawl and a cracked, bitter, evil face. We can smell the stench of oil and metal. We can feel the cramped, tinny confines of the sleeping quarters. Kormákur possesses that very Icelandic ability to translate the salt and grime of the ocean onto film; and it makes for a surprisingly gritty and believable tone for this unabashed, action-packed blockbuster.

It’s when the crew touch down in Panama that the film bolts out of the gates, dragging us through the Latin dust like an angry bull. They have a matter of hours to locate their contact, load the huge crates of counterfeit bills into a truck, and get back to the ship before anyone notices they've left. Unsurprisingly the plan falls apart, and suddenly it’s a race against time that is frantic and powerful enough to whip us up into a frenzy. Unfortunately, the unrelenting force of our hero's progression actually damages the suspense. The film is so eager to get to Farraday's climactic, heroic ending that we are never really given time to doubt his success or feel he might lose.

The twists and turns of the ending are in turns exciting and hilarious, but again, they are never exactly “edge-of-your-seat”. Ben Foster, Diego Luna, Giovanni Ribisi and J.K Simmons provide wonderful support as the 'bad guys', but their power is muted by the inevitability of Farraday’s unimpinged success.

All in all, this is an exciting, evocative, and beautifully shot action movie with some great central performances. It feels gritty and dirty despite its obvious Hollywood sheen; and the ending is still very entertaining despite its truth-stretching and predictability.

REVIEW: Wanderlust (dir. David Wain)

Cast: Paul Rudd, Jennifer Aniston, Justin Theroux, Alan Alda, Ken Marino, Malin Akerman

In America, you have to be for something or against it. Democrat or Republican, North or South, hawk or pacifist, vegan or carnivore. At one end of the scale you might find a man in a golf shirt driving a Lincoln 4x4 between his various mistresses while his frail, slutty wife drinks herself into a stupor in front of their 65" plasma. At the other end, you'll find a gang of nudist, vegan winemakers practicing free love on a ranch commune in Georgia. People who live in New York are uniquely privileged in being able to avoid this dialectic: they can own a "micro-loft" apartment and buy locally produced groceries from a "village store", whilst still working for a giant corporation and owning the 65" plasma. But what happens when your company goes bust and you can't afford to live in 'The City That Doesn't Have To Make Up It's Mind' anymore? You have to choose: are you with the guy driving the Navigator between his suburban pile and his lucrative Portaloo company? Or are you with the free-lovin', hummus-dippin' hippies?

This is the central premise of 'Wanderlust', David Wain's latest creation starring the louche and sparkly-eyed Paul Rudd, and the still-somehow-smiling Jennifer Aniston. When George and Linda's NYC dream comes crashing down around them they are forced to move to Atlanta to live with George's jockish, unbearably "American" brother, Rick (played by co-writer Ken Marino). On route they stop off at a roadside ranch called Elysian to rest their heads, but discover themselves captivated by the free-spirited and light-hearted community of oddballs that resides there. After a few days under his brother's thumb, George decides they should return to the ranch and allow their spirits to truly wander free for the first time. What follows is a hilarious and observant take on America's modern day hippie subculture - nudity, peyote and all - and what happens when middle-class people try to embrace it.

David Wain is probably best known these days as the creator of Role Models - another charming and funny Paul Rudd vehicle - but he was also a key proponent of the wonderful 90s sketch troupe The State, and co-collaborators pop up all over this film. Ken Marino picks up a screenwriting credit as well as starring as the utterly pathetic and detestable Rick; and Joe Lo Truglio also stars as Wayne, the nudist winemaker. American comedy veteran Alan Alda also gives a delightful performance as the frail, acid-frazzled founder of Elysian. Other familiar relationships have shaped the cast of this project: Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd spent years together on the set of Friends, and Aniston's current beau Justin Theroux stars as Seth, the talisman and lothario of the commune. In fact the only person that doesn't have an obvious connection is Malin Akerman; and the reasons for inviting her along are self-evident.

I labour this point because of the old adage, "you only get out of it what you put into it". If you put a gaggle of like-minded, familiar, and hysterical friends in an idyllic, summertime location and set a camera rolling, you'll make something hysterical, charming, and friendly. That's how it works. This film isn't going to stick in your mind because of a stirring and original narrative or heart-wrenching lead performance; it's going to stick there because it is just good fun, plain and simple.

It is also laugh-out-loud hilarious. The mixture of breezy ad-libbing, masterful comic timing, and a brilliant, observant script should be enough to make the most dismissive viewer chuckle. Who wouldn't laugh when Seth, asked why he sleeps outside in the rain, says, “I drink the nourishment that God is feeding me through her cloud teats.”Anyone who dismisses this as "another Jennifer Aniston film" would be doing an unforgivable disservice to the legion of talented comedians and comic filmmakers involved. And, frankly, they'd be doing a disservice to Aniston too. Maybe she'll never win an Oscar, but she has put the hours in throughout her career and fashioned herself into the sort of wilful, doe-eyed comedienne that the world learned to love with Meg Ryan.

Still not convinced? This film has the best cameo appearance since Bill Murray in Zombieland. There… now you have to watch it.

REVIEW: In Darkness (dir. Agnieszka Holland)

Cast: Robert Wieckiewicz, Benno Fürmann, Agnieszka Grochowska, Maria Schrader, Herbert Knaup

In Darkness is perhaps the bravest setting for a film in recent years: not because of its social context (although in dealing with the ransacking of a Polish ghetto by German forces, it certainly stakes a claim), but because it is set almost entirely in the dark and fetid confines of a sewage system.

When news of an impending attack spreads through the ghetto of Lvov, Leopold Socha agrees to aid a group of Jews into the city’s sewers. Socha is the only man left in Lvov capable of looking after the sewers, and is trusted by the local authorities and their German overseers to maintain the labyrinth of tunnels and caverns that burrows beneath the crumbling city. His decision to aid the group is born out of a need for money (he dislikes “Yids” as much as the rest of his country folk, and has no qualms telling Chiger to turn some of his group away to their certain deaths). But as the months wear on, and the money runs out, Socha must decide whether he is the sort of man who will stand back and watch evil run its course, or risk his life and the safety of his family to save an innocent group of people he barely knows.

Working under Poland’s cinematic talisman Andrzej Wajda – followed by stints directing episodes of The Wire, The Killing, and Treme – has given Agnieszka Holland a mature confidence and masterful touch. The opening is gripping; choreographing vast numbers of extras across a large set to perfectly capture the panic and hysteria of an impending Nazi invasion. The scope of the scene condenses to a small room with a rabble of desperate Jews attempting to escape into the sewers: and all that energy is packed into the room with them. Moving further, we find ourselves trapped and disorientated in the darkness of the sewers, racing through the muck and mire.

The cinematography down in the tunnels is wonderful: using limited lighting to great effect. In moments of tension, the darkness is interrupted by sudden bursts of action and light. Torchlight that seems some way off suddenly ruptures the entire screen; blinding us momentarily in the darkness of the cinema and leaving us preying not to be caught. At other times the lighting is cruel and cold: projecting a sickly, Francis Bacon pallor across the fetid sewers as we come face to face with the constant, plodding degradation. But then somehow there are also moments of great warmth: bathing the characters in a homely glow as they find brief glimpses of humour and humanity in their plight.

The performances are equally astute. Fraying nerves, desperation and utter grief are boxed up in the confines of this dank, dripping hell. It is almost inconceivable that such horror could be composed and structured into a meaningful emotional journey shared by so many individual characters, yet somehow Holland and her cast have succeeded spectacularly.

Despite it’s many merits, the story drags, and at 145mins it is perhaps too long. The problem arises when we start to see too much of Socha’s life above ground. No matter how much we see of his family life, we will never fully understand why he is doing this. Holland should have the confidence to let him alone, and concentrate on the drama below ground, where the truly mesmerising and cinematic story takes place.

Of course it should be a moving and melancholy film. But other films have used the Holocaust as an excuse to be just that. This film is trying to do more – it wants to be visceral and energetic – and with a more confident cut it could achieve it in bundles.

REVIEW: The Deep Blue Sea (dir. Terence Davies)

Cast: Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston, Simon Russell Beale, Ann Mitchell, Karl Johnson

Terence Davies’ adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea is the finale that marks the end of Rattigan’s centenary year. One of the most underrated playwrights of the twentieth century, Rattigan’s devastating wit and subtle emotional depth need to be broadcast to a new generation; and nobody is better suited for the task than Terence Davies.

Her suicide note penned, Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz) is lying in a foetal position before the gas fireplace; staring at the rippling stream of noxious fumes for which there is no flame to burn. As she drifts off we see a quiet montage of images: Hester with an older gentleman, her husband, Hester with a younger gentleman, her lover. If you have any expectations of a Rattigan adaptation, they are not being met. This is no kitchen sink drama. This is Luis Bunuel. Abstract, surreal dream sequences; soft hazy memories that have the faint chill of something nightmarish. Davies finds a way to imbue all the tingling anxiety of a Rattigan play into this very cinematic opening.

But the opening subsides, as they all do, and makes way for a more traditional reworking of the play. Hester leaves her stuffy aristocrat husband (played with grace and poise by the inestimable Simon Russell Beale) to pursue love of a more lustful flavour with Battle of Britain survivor Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston). She is a victim of the post-war appetite for freedom and discovery. The world has changed since she was married, and she wants to be out there getting dirty in it. But it doesn’t take long for her to realise that her love for Freddie, and for that brand new sparkling world, cannot be requited.

Davies knows how to fracture a narrative, and does so here with effortless skill. The basic story is simple and coherent, but scenes from different points in the story interrupt each other, creating an extra layer of emotional and psychological distress. Alas, somehow the freshness of the narrative structure is choked out by the traditional, yawning melodrama. Everything from the stained rococo wallpaper to the raucous sing-a-long in the local pub conspires against innovation. There is something timeless about Rattigan’s work, but also something inherently nostalgic and dated; and Davies doesn’t help matters by plastering a violin score onto the film that is too loud and overdramatic.

At 40, Rachel Weisz was the right age to play Hester when filming commenced; but Davies knew that she wouldn’t look a day over 30 on screen. Hester’s youthfulness turns the entire play on its head: what should be a broken adult running away from life is now a doe-eyed English rose escaping the shackles of aristocracy and joining the excited ranks of England’s post-war youth. As this lustful dream crumbles around her, however, we realise that she is not so young after all: she is old enough to be both cruel and utterly dependent.

Without this new perspective this is really just the story of a woman who can’t make her mind up; but fortunately Weisz revels in it. Her weary, haunted gaze veils her delicate features throughout, and were this a more surreal film one might almost suggest that the entire story is a figment of her fume-choked imagination during the throws of attempted suicide. If Davies has borrowed from Bunuel, then Weisz is his Deneuve: she is distant, never quite there, but when she crumbles into tears we feel them in our own throats.

There is a pleasant circularity to the film that is all Davies. Left alone and in tatters, Hester once again lies before the fireplace and allows the fumes to leak out; but with a flick of her wrist she ignites the fire, introducing a flame that warms her already radiant face. She will live to fight on.

REVIEW: J. Edgar (dir. Clint Eastwood)

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Judi Dench, Geoff Pierson

J. Edgar examines the life of one of America’s most mysterious figures, FBI Director Hoover. The film follows Hoover (played by an unrecognisable Leonardo DiCaprio) towards the end of his life, as he attempts to dictate his memoirs and the story of the FBI (the two being wholly intertwined).

In 1924, at the tender age of twenty-nine, Hoover was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation, and remained until his death in 1972. The Bureau was his life: he never married or had children, and he kept his secretary, Miss Gandy (Naomi Watts), and deputy Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), with him throughout his career.

Hoover’s tenure at the Bureau oversaw some of the most important controversies and scandals of the American century: John Dillinger’s capture, The Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King, the death of Marilyn Monroe, Hoover’s name crops up everywhere. Clint Eastwood’s film stumbles nervously through a few of these energetic and utterly cinematic situations before settling on the most stale and untenable facets of Hoover’s life: his cynical involvement in the Lindbergh kidnapping case, and his homosexual love affair with Tolson.

In March 1932 legendary aviator Charles A. Lindbergh’s infant son was kidnapped from the family home. It was a case for the state police, but Hoover used the ensuing trial to widen the scope of the FBI and to create a centralised fingerprint database. It is an important part of American history, but a comparatively boring one. As for Hoover’s homosexuality: it can never be proven, and allowing it to consume our understanding of the man is demeaning. He wasn’t a good person, but he was a multi-faceted one. Tarring him (for two hours) with this brush is irresponsible and, again, boring.

This is all a huge shame, because Hoover was unarguably one of the most sinister and shadowy figures of the 20th Century. He answered to nobody, and used his power to amass private files on every political figure and celebrity in the United States. He was Norman Bates with a more attuned and sinister “Mummy” complex. He didn’t need to spy through a hole in the shower, he had the most well funded institution in Washington for that. He spied on John F Kennedy and used the resulting sex tape to bribe brother Bobby, then Attorney General, to fund his ongoing and entirely pointless anti-Communist campaigns. You could close your eyes and poke a stick into almost any part of the man’s life and come up with a story bristling with intrigue and energy.

How Eastwood has managed to create so dull a film is actually quite stunning. Nor can Eastwood argue that he didn’t want to cast aspersions on unproven stories: if this were the case, he surely wouldn't spend half the film watching Hoover and Tolson’s wild and emotional love affair, for which there has never been a shred of corroborated evidence.

The film is almost saved by its three central performances. DiCaprio, Hammer and Watts have their faces caked in varying degrees of makeup and prosthetics throughout the film in an attempt to convey the almost half a century over which the story takes place. The makeup is as good as you will see without the overpriced CGI geekery of Cameron or Fincher, but it is hugely distracting for the viewer and, with less capable actors, might have destroyed the natural performances.

Fortunately these are not lesser actors. DiCaprio is, as we have come to expect, excellent as Hoover. He transcends the prosthetic appendages and conveys the slow deterioration of a powerful man in ways no makeup or CGI ever could. His eyes are always alight, but his voice slowly weakens to a croak, and his shoulders stoop to creaking. It is a powerful performance, supported admirably by the understated grace of Naomi Watts and the chirpy, disarming Armie Hammer.