thomas4cinema

Andrew Dominik is a strange phenomenon: only one movie I have seen of him, “The Assassination…”, but already I was looking forward to his next project as if he was one of the old guard, established through decades of exciting movie-making. Why is that? I think because that first film showed so much style, pacing, camerawork, actors’ guidance that it was hard to conceive that this was coincidence. It was a film by somebody who has found his style as auteur. “Killing them Softly” is evidence of this. Again the pace is very controlled, despite the plot around a plan to get rid of a bunch of crooks who conned the wrong people. This could be a hectic chase, but it is rather directed as alternating between morons plotting their deed, and the controlled business of solving a problem within the system. This is violent, and cool, and …. Interesting (for lack of a better word). It is sometimes also a bit ridden with the feeling that it serves a continuity in Dominik’s CV more than the urge to tell a story in a way suitable to that very story. Might be a change in pace and style would have been a good thing for this young director, to show he is capable  of following the needs of a story rather than fulfilling expectations. As it is, the great cast has little to do, but Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins, Ray Liotta and James Gandolfini in particular bring their movie history to the screen to good effect.  Actually, it is the young actors (Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelson, both I did not know before, I think) who have to bear the burden of making the film come alive, break out of its cool but static self. They do that very well, even though I could not help but think that people who get very agitated and excited tend to not fare well in the world of Andrew Dominik…

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/killing_them_softly/

Steven Soderbergh leaves me more and more flabbergasted with every film he makes. It was strange and cool enough to play the “one for them, one for me” game with the Hollywood establishment, with interesting experimental work resulting that showed a craft not often witnessed in arthouse cinema (Girlfriend Experience may be one of my favourites, but also Solaris). What is more astounding is that in the last couple of years he gets away with arthouse-style blockbuster films that really have not existed before. Michael Clayton, Contagion, Haywire… these defy categorization and refuse to bend their knees to either the expectations of an elitist artsy audience that wants to see “Bubbles” or “Sex, Lies…” all over until the world ends, or give his Oceans Whatever crowd the pleasure of brain-dead star-studded blockbusters. These later films have entertainment value, they are indeed often star-studded, and then they kick you in the face with realism and darkness. I like that, it merges my needs, if you will, and makes me need to see less movies, as Soderbergh gives me a buy-one-get-one-free ticket into modern movie making. Magic Mike is a logical continuation of this, with nice show values (especially if you are into male secondary sex organs, or into Olivia Munn, and who isn’t!?), but it refuses to become Full Monty even though it has so many chances to do so. Instead, it deconstructs a world of perceived glamour, and it also happens to deconstruct and then reconstruct Matthew McGonnagall… sorry, did it again…. that guy who played Killer Joe and nothing decent before that, and who suddenly this year emerged as a real actor, despite his outrageously ridiculous hair. Channing Tatum also impressed me with his somber, mature performance – I cannot recall that I ever saw him doing something sensible on screen (maybe Haywire, but I cannot remember that one very well), seems that the Soderbergh ambition of these years is also to find actors who do not know yet that they have good acting in them.

Very good film, all in all, with just the right balance of stop and go. And a reminder that we all have to step up our workout efforts …

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/magic_mike/

Of course I will watch all three parts of the Hobbit films, of course I will look forward to seeing those guys and ghouls back on screen. That is exactly why Jackson hijacked his production company into doing it that way: people like me just are a bit dumb and don’t have the guts to cut that rope and forfeit on this kind of nonsensical endeavour. I can perfectly well imagine how that meeting with the producers went down: del Toro can’t direct anymore because the producers could not get the financing together in time, so ok, Jackson, says, I will do it. But I will do it once and cash in thrice, ok? A bit more work on the set, having dwarfs walk across hilltops for a couple of days longer, and go back to post-production studios two more weeks over the next two years, and I’m in. New Line has three Christmas slots filled, marginal costs are not very high, and unless you pull a Spiderman 3 debacle, there is no reason why the audiences wouldn’t show up when being told. The chances of this happening is slim, as the film has been shot in one go anyway, so parts 2 and 3 will be as good or bad as part 1, anyway. Even if it’s a bit rubbish, people would forget until next year. Low-risk money machine, sheer genius…

I wouldn’t mind that, actually, if there was any story to be told over an eight-hour stretch. Anybody familiar with the book knows that this is not the case. It is a slim book, with easy narrative, written for young audiences. We even know the background of most characters already, as we have seen the 9 or 12 hours of Lord of the Rings not too long ago. So what’s to be done with all that time? Sit down and chat, walk across hilltops (I honestly believe they did not even shoot new footage for that… walking across hilltops material must still be available aplenty from the previous films, used and unused), fight some orcs. Fighting orcs is not to be taken lightly, they are vicious combatants, but after about 40 minutes net orc battle time I could not be bothered anymore. I felt my mind wandering to the equally dragging Battle at Helm’s Klamm, or the final and more dragging battle of the Ring trilogy, where the pointy-eared and poorly cgi’ed Orloondo Blunt rides some weird mammoths. Is Peter Jackson so powerful a player now that there is no producer has the balls to kick him the hell out of the editing room and get some pacing into these films? The Hobbit reminds us all why after the first Harry Potter movie the director was removed from the franchise, as even Rowling’s lawyers realised that nobody wants to see a checklist approach to filming a book that deals with fantasy. The Hobbit seems to be slavishly committed to please those who know the book by heart, and despite the sometimes stunning visuals (more the hilltops than the cgi, really, I was not convinced by many of the fighting scenes), there is no dynamic, there is only quite daft humour (the opening dwarf meeting, the troll scene… that was more funny when I was 12) what’s left is a feeling of boredom, spiced with annoyance.

The three trolls bickering over their  dinner has been more entertainingly filmed in Jarmusch’s “Dead Man”, by the way…

I look forward to part 2, if grumpily…

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_hobbit_an_unexpected_journey/

I recently saw a list of ambitious 2012 movie failures somewhere, cannot quite remember where that was. I was surprised, very surprised, that Cloud Atlas was not on the list. This film gives all the “Prometheus”-es, and “Dark Knight Rises”-es a run for their money. It is hyperbolic to almost a comic degree, aiming at running the audience through  a couple of thousand years in a mere two and a half hours. It is said that the book on which the film is based is utterly complex, demanding the utmost efforts on part of the reader to follow the web of connections through various plot threads. The film, as it turns out, is nothing like that. There are six films, if my memory serves me right, and what is surprising is how straightforwardly they have been edited together. Sometimes each bit is only on-screen for some moments, but there is no way to confuse where you are and what that bit of story is about. This is a problem. The film pretends to be complex and ambitious, but matter-of-fact, it is not. It is quite simple, actually, meaning the stories we see are not very demanding, some of them are not even very interesting. A composer who creates the eternal masterpiece and is subjected to his master’s jeaoulsy, check! A publisher who is submitted by his brother to a nursing home and plans his escape, check! Halle Berry clad in tight coveralls, check! (really does not matter much what she’s doing as long as she is wearing those…). And so on. Some of these stories could have become nice movies, some comedies (elderly refugees rescued by Scottish rugby supporters), some even Summer blockbusters (clone becomes the voice of the counterrevolution). We have seen all these movies, but never mind, production design and special effects make it worth doing it over and over again. But merging all that into one movie is a bit sad if this merger process does not add anything. What does it add? The sentence that all is connected, and that whoever messes with the Greater Flow of Things ends up being not a lucky person.

I have to stress that I did not mind the film, watched with interest what the hell these guys were doing, but at some point I realised that this was really more curiosity than immersion, and I could not help but frequently checking the clock to see how much time is left until the end of times…

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cloud_atlas_2012/

Looper

I have seen “Looper” twice now. After the first viewing, I appreciated it, but I was not too thrilled. After second watching, I liked it better, I clicked with the characters, started getting into the atmosphere of the world populated by this professional executioner and his colleagues we are introduced to. What I like most about the film may be the casual approach to this job: you wait for a victim to be sent by time machine in front of your gun, you shoot them right away, no drama, no mercy, just a job that is not even very well appreciated by the peer group. And the catch of this life, the fact that you will be standing in front of your own gun at some point, is drowned in drugs and money. The confrontation between young Looper and old Looper is designed in an interesting way, I could understand the actions of the antagonists and could sympathise with even the most horrid actions. Time travel is used not as a device to fool around with, but as a curse that really “fries your brain”, as one character put it. Not in the physical way, but by allowing you to create options that you should not have in life, tormenting you into making the right choices. Recently well done in Stephen King’s JFK assassination novel, now in worn-down futuristic style done to the benefit of movie audiences. Do we have a new trend, the serious time travelling story? Wouldn’t be a bad thing…

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/looper/

Lawless

These days, any film with Tom Hardy on the poster is a must-see for me. That bulky English dude has, through just “Bronson”, “Inception” and “Warrior”, become my screen favourite of the decade, matched maybe by Michael Fassbender, but certainly with better abs and lips. In “Lawless”, he has become the unbreakable physical presence that may have been at the heart of his performances all along, a Bronson with a family to take care of, only cool, controlled, and with a business to run. With any other actor in this role, “Lawless” would be a nice, yet harmless bit of prohibition costume piece – with him (and despite Shia The Beef, slightly annoying as most times) and Jessica Chastain, and Guy Pearce, it is a strong character piece about small-town infights, corruption, charme and the need to survive. Funny that these days I am watching “Justified”, the tv show with Timothy Olyphant playing a US Marshall thrown into his Kentucky home county. Those stories and the characters at their centers have a lot in common, they feature a rather inhospitable part of the US territory where people fight for survival with all means, and every problem and all trouble is personal right away. But fear not, Tom Hardy is here to make a stand, because he is immortal!

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lawless_2012/

Life of Pi

Why see “Life of Pi”? If you have read the book, as so many have, you can have the expectation that a movie has very little to add to the inner monologue provided by the protagonist. The book already comes in spectacular colours and flavours, its exoticism does not require illustration. The story of a boy caught on a life boat with a couple of zoo animals after their ship has sunk lends itself to hours of staring on the water, with a few moments of real-life spectacle changing the tone occasionally (whales, sharks, storms, mostly). But the interesting bits really happen within Pi’s reflections on life, location, religion and family – and there is all reason to wonder whether there is a way or a need to paint this on a movie screen.

Ang Lee has chosen to focus on the few bits that lend themselves to optical spectacle, and he fares well with it. It is the water and the stars, the grass and the hills that star in his movie, with Pi sitting admiringly in the center without too much to do. Watching this, I found myself admiring the images, and waiting for the next good bits to come once the last ones had vanished. If you know the book, there is no drama in the film, as the few plot points are easily remembered even if you read it a decade ago as I did. I appreciated the film as something like a 3D version of Baraka (or Samsara, more recently), beautiful to look at, but without plot to speak of. As such, it works better than if to hold it accountable for the philosophy rolled out in the novel, and the moments where this philosophy comes into the script are even a bit clumsy (were we all really so easily impressed with this when reading it?). But watching Richard Parker jump through a field of meerkat snacks and take a full bite – that is a lovely sight, indeed!

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/life-of-pi/