Latest screening: Taking Woodstock

Some have argued that Taking Woodstock seems a strange film for Ang Lee to take on. I don't prescribe to this view. How a man that has made a period action epic like Crouching Toger Hidden Dragon, a politically-charged 70s-set family saga like The Ice Storm, a western like Ride With The Devil, a ground-breaking same sex love story in Brokeback Mountain and a comic-book superhero movie in Hulk can be said to have a "type" of film that he makes is beyond me. One thing you can't do is pigeon-hole Ang Lee.

That said, it doesn't mean that every film works and here he comes unstuck. Taking Woodstock is not a bad film, indeed, had it not been made by Lee reviews would no doubt be kinder, but it is very much a film of two halves.

The film starts well and the set up is well handled. Here we have a frustratingly quiet town for prpotagonist Elliot, who wants to be a good son to his domineering mother and put-upon father, but longs, silently, to escape. He sees a chance to help his parents get out from under financial problems and free himself in the process when an opportunity comes his way to use a license he has to host a musical festival (which traditionally consists of his playing records on his lawn) to attract an adrift massive music festival to his town.

So far so good and for about an hour things are ticking along nicely. Elliot and the other characters are well set up and believable, with the possible exception of Emile Hirsch who simply doesn't convince the viewer that he has seen real combat - a problem since his character is a disturbed soldier, recently returned from Vietnam.

The early scenes have a wealth of humour, from a town-council meeting that is gently mocking of small town bureaucrats; to the overwhelming cheapness of Elliot's mum (a brilliant Imelda Staunton); to the arrival of cross-dresser Liev Schreiber looking for a security job; and the general escalation of the festival.

Small turns from the likes of Eugene Levy and Jeffrey Dean Morgan provide real characters despite little screen time, but Lee establishes the world with his usual skill and eye for character and observational humour.

Unfortunately he then abandons it all as the film loses its way wallowing in the experiences common to a coming-of-age film and expected in a film set in this era - as Elliot discovers his sexuality, drugs and an independence he hadn't sought. The problem here is that's the end of the story. Threads about towns folk unhappy with millions of teenagers descending on the town, local muscle men looking for a slice of the pie, his mother's secret, selfish hoard, etc are all abandoned and character development goes out the window. Early established characters like Eugene Levy's farmer and Jeffrey Dean Morgan's straight-laced but concerned brother to Hirsch's Billy completely disappear.

If the film were truly giving a sense of his experiences perhaps this could be forgiven, but it doesn't. Lee is too shy - perhaps after the criticism he got in some circles for the graphic imagery of Lust, Caution - to show a lot of the inferred events unfold and others, such as his parents experiencing the effects a hash brownies, are played too briefly purely for the comic effect and to remind us (or maybe Lee) that there are actually others characters in this world.

And then it kind of peters out!

It leaves you wondering why the set-up if its all going to be abandoned down the road. Either you are making a film about Elliot's experiences or a larger canvas, but this appears to start as one and becomes another. And unfortunately the second part, the experiences, are neither terribly original, revelatory or interesting. Watching someone else get high on film is like watching someone play a computer game - if you're not doing it yourself it's lost in translation!

A disappointing film, but one that does offer some entertaining humour in the first hour and a dynamite supporting performance from Staunton that will no doubt be lost in the general inanity of the film. Shame.

Latest screening: Whatever Works

I so wanted to like Whatever Works, a comedy that combines the great Woody Allen with the ascerbic genius of Larry David. Throw in Evan Rachel Wood (so great in last year's The Wrestler) and the ever brilliant Patricia Clarkson and surely we have lightning in a bottle? No?! Ah, well, but then maybe expectations were part of the problem.

I didn't dislike Whatever Works. It was no disaster like Cassandra's Dream or even a generally bad but occasionally amusing one like Curse Of The Jade Scorpion or Hollywood Ending. But it also wasn't reeeeeaaaaalllyy funny.

After Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which had me laughing like a drain throughout, i had high hopes for a comedy combining Allen's humour with David's personality. But unfortunately Whatever Works runs along constantly raising a smile but rarely gaining a full-on laugh. It is amusing and likeable but that's all - playing a bit like Anything Else. Of Allen's comedy output over the past decade i would place it behind Melinda & Melinda on a rough par with Small Time Crooks, but maybe not quite as good even as that. Better than Scoop.

This is a shame because David does work as a Woody substitute. In fact, he may be the best Woody substitute in that David has such a distinctive creative voice of his own that he is the first to truly have no trace of Woody in his portrayal. An impressive feat in itself. That said, he isn't really an actor. While the role of Larry David he plays on Curb Your Enthusiasm is an exaggeration, a perfect version of what he wishes he could be and do it has set up an idea of what Larry David is. Here he is playing a different character but it is a slightly more pathetic and needy version of the same Larry we know, and therefore other characters referring to him as Boris just never sounds or seems right. He is not playing a character, he's being Larry David in a Woody Allen film. This might have worked in a brilliantly post-modern way if somehow Woody and Larry had collaborated to make the exact story of Whatever Works with just a few minor tweaks at the beginning into a Curb Movie spin-off.

Evan Rachel Wood is endearingly oddball but never has much to do given her screentime. Clarkson makes an impact as best she can and Ed Begley Jr is dynamite in a briefish role but this is Larry's show. It's more about a single central character than any film Allen has made that he didn't star in.

Perhaps when revisited without the expectations i'll enjoy it more but i was disappointed. Not a disaster by any means but sadly just not really that funny given the talent involved.

Behold The A-Team

And damn if Liam Neeson doesn't look damn spot on as Hannibal!

New trailer: Invictus

Mostly i don't mention new trailer's in the trailer bar (see right) at the moment because of all the screening posts but as this is Invictus - a film with the heady, awards baiting pedigree of director Clint Eastwood directing Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and throwing Matt Damon into the mix - this one has to be highlighted. It always sounded destined to be an awards season player and this trailer does nothing to contradict such assumptions.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/invictus/

Latest screening: A Serious Man

Ah, God bless the Coens. After No Country For Old Men and Burn After Reading they continue their stunning role in such style it is easy to imagine that The Ladykillers was merely a bad dream!

A Serious Man is at once hilarious, touching, intriguing and confounding – everything the brothers do so well.

After a funny, Yiddish-language parable shot in a different aspect ratio which opens the movie like a Pixar short film – connective to the main film but not really directly related – we launch into the story of college professor Larry (the excellent Michael Stuhlbarg).

Larry is a vintage Coen character. Like a 1960s, lead character version of Steve Buscemi’s Donnie character in The Big Lebowski. He is a somewhat hapless, put-upon character. A character going through life minding his own business who would happily avoid conflict or difficulty at every turn, but whom, like a cat to the allergic, conflict and difficulty is inexorably drawn. Problems beyond his control arise in just about every possible aspect of his life and he greats each one as best he can, while displaying the accumulating weight of this world on his shoulders.

Stuhlbarg is fantastic. As the film heaps more and more bad luck and misfortune on him you can see the despair in his eyes, the weight on his soul. You feel that sense of how close he could teeter on the brink of a breakdown, just hanging on as best he can, struggling for meaning in world that offers none. He is fair-minded, just, honest, hard-working, caring, practical, yet nothing he seems to do helps. The sense of his being overwhelmed grows so naturally that it is hard to believe more is not being verbalized, so clear is Stuhlbarg’s internal feeling.

But this is not a depressing film and it is not one of the Coen’s straight, more serious films. Tonally it probably has most in common with Barton Fink, but it is much funnier. A series of meetings with various Rabbis are highlights, especially the second which contains the relating of a story so brilliantly Coen in both imagination and delivery of dialogue that you kind of know how the joke is going to work but you’re enjoying getting there and so happy when it does.

It is very much Stuhlbarg’s film. Beyond Larry the world is the character. It is the Coens world, but also cinematographer Roger Deakins’ world. After skipping out on Burn After Reading Deakins is back with the Coens where he belongs and the world of A Serious Man is typically beautiful. Deakins has done period, suburban beauty with the Coens before in The Man Who Wasn’t There, but here he can also add a colour palette and the result is stunning visual that belie the unflashy setting.

Carter Burwell’s score is also deceptively well judged, to the point you almost forget it’s there but it resonates beyond the film. It’s no Fargo score, which really plays well divorced from image on CD, but it is another crucial part that makes the Coen world seem whole.

The best decision here though was to abandon their regular stock company, not just the “star” names like George Clooney but also the regular character actors like Steve Buscemi, Jon Polito, Frances McDormand, John Turturro, John Goodman, Peter Stormare, Michael Badalucco, etc. About the most recognizable name in the movie is Richard Kind (at least recognizable to fans of the Michael J Fox sitcom Spin City) and Barton Fink’s Michael Lerner does turn up ever so briefly. But Lerner’s brief appearance almost feels like it serves to say, “no, this is not one for the regulars”!

Stuhlbarg is so convincing in the lead, and seems so suited to the Coens world (much like Billy Bob Thornton stepped so easily into the barbers shoes of Man Who Wasn’t There) that while this film doesn’t feature the Coen regulars it did leave me hoping Stuhlbarg becomes one of them.

Some will no doubt find the conclusion frustrating but it feels like the end the film deserves. The Coens have never strived to make a ‘Hollywood’ happy fit movie, they have consistently shown Hollywood what can be done.

A Coen film is also a must see but A Serious Man does not disappoint. It is certainly one of the highlights of the year so far and, given the Coens heightened awards profile post No Country, should at the very least garner strong awards attention for Stuhlbarg if not for the brothers and their behind camera colleagues.

Latest screening: Bright Star

I love the score to The Piano. I’m stating that upfront because it’s about the only positive thing I’ve ever been able to say about a Jane Campion movie. I haven’t seen An Angel At My Table but I hated The Piano, Holy Smoke, The Portrait Of A Lady and In The Cut so you’ll forgive me for not seeking it out.

It was therefore with trepidation that I went to see Campion’s latest Bright Star, but I have heard good things about the stars and familiarity with both Ben Whishaw (significantly Perfume) and Abbie Cornish’s (most notably the powerful Candy) previous work compelled me to give it a chance.

I can say it is Campion’s best work. I can say I liked it more than any of her previous films. I cannot day I liked it. I didn’t.

Bright Star is a typically overwrought, tedious, unconvincing, tiring Campion movie. That this is based on the real, tragic love story of one of the world’s most celebrated romantic poets makes Campion’s talent for wringing all the tedium she can from a subject (see Portrait Of A Lady) all the more impressive. The leads fail to engage on any level. Fanny Brawne (Cornish) is unlikeable, self-absorbed and arrogant. Whishaw’s Keats is irritatingly pathetic. Perhaps these are accurate portrayals but they feel more like a modern idea of what they might have been like and so, even if they are accurate, the film has failed to convey a realism to them.

Where recently lead performances in films like An Education, A Single Man, A Serious Man and Precious, and even bigger more action oriented films like The Hurt Locker and even District 9(!), have seemed entirely authentic those of Bright Star always feel Acted, and yes the capital A is intentional!

That is not to say Cornish and Whishaw don’t try their best, and Whishaw pretty much gets away with it, but they are poorly served by a director who couldn’t stage drama in the middle of the war zone! I just didn’t care about these characters. In fact I’ll further than that, as Fanny is the lead character here you should engage with her, care for her, want her to get what she wants, sympathize when things go awry. Her emotional arch should be yours. In Campion’s inept hands I found myself not only not caring what happened to her but actually happy that such a self-obsessed, silly childish girl saw her “love” end in tragedy.

Part of the problem is that there is zero chemistry between Whishaw and Cornish. In the depressing quagmire that is a Jane Campion movie perhaps chemistry cannot exist, surely any spark would quickly be dampened, but this is supposed to be the love that inspired Keats to some of the greatest romantic poems ever written. This is a real life tragic love story that should lend itself to the emotional rollercoaster that a movie can deliver. It should be heartbreaking, I just found myself happy when the tragic events came about as I knew it was finally nearly over!

I also don’t get all the praise for Cornish. She was fine, doing the best she could, but was all wrong for the part. There are some actors that can play in costume drama convincingly (I hesitate to praise Keira Knightley in any way but she does have a natural look for it) and those that work in any period, modern or old (Kate Winslet, Natalie Portman, Kelly Reilly, Romola Garai, Rosamund Pike). Then there are actresses that are simply too modern looking to convincingly fit in costume dramas, such as Angelina Jolie, Anne Hathaway or Scarlett Johansson. Cornish is sadly one of the latter group. From the first instant she seems like a 21st century girl playing dress up (not helped by the sometimes so “TV Costume Drama” costumes that even Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist looks convincing). Again Whishaw is aided by his look, he just fits in this world, but Cornish doesn’t.

Equally problematic is she has a distinctly antipodean look. Some people, many people, have an inescapable appearance that makes you know their nationality without them uttering a word. It’s a game you can play down the pub, and it’s all too easy sometimes. It’s no fault of their own and there’s nothing they can do about it. Michael Caine never works as American because (regardless of shakey accents – even his Oscar-winning one for Cider House Rules) he is inescapably British. Keira Knightley has the same problem. You couldn’t cast Thomas Haden Church as British, or Brendan Gleeson as French, or Penelope Cruz as Australian, or Sean Connery as Spanish (wait, hang on a minute – no, Highlander just proves my point!). Cornish looks Australian, it’s that simple. This is a big problem when she has to convince as a 19th century English woman! As a result she doesn’t.

A saving grace is the excellent Paul Schneider as Keats’ suspicious and cynical, but well-meaning friend Charles Brown. Schneider is utterly convincing and the scenes between he and Whishaw are highlight of the film. For me Schneider was the only performance I walked away knowing would remain with me come nomination selection time, but Whishaw may make it depending on competition. Cornish is a no go for me, as it the film as a whole, but no doubt given the British obsession with costume drama it will make a good showing at BAFTA regardless. It was at least nice to see the BIFAs not prostrate at Bright Star’s feet.

It Best Actress terms the beautifully played, naturalistic performances of both Gabourey Sidibe in Precious and Carey Mulligan in An Education run rings around Cornish and it would be a massive injustice if she beat either.

Campion is still zero for 5 in my book.

Latest screening: A Prophet (Un Prophete)

It seems to me that Jacques Audiard just gets better and better as a filmmaker and his latest film A Prophet (Un Prophete) is an assured, powerful work that resonates with you well after you finish watching it.

It the distributor gets their act together on screeners for this one A Prophet could be one of those films that breaks out of the limiting ‘Best Film Not in the English Language’ category at the BAFTA Film Awards and easily find itself with thoroughly deserved best actor and supporting actor nominations.

Tahar Rahim is superb as the lead, a character so real it’s like watching a nature documentary, you want to get in there and help him. Set in a prison this is no Shawshank Redemption although it is curiously uplifting in a strange way! Rahim takes his character from outcast, frightened newbie; to put upon weakling, subservient dogsbody; to crafty go-getter; to self-assured player – and all completely naturally. It is as impressive a performance as I’ve seen this year and deserves to stand along side the more typical English-language performances come awards time. At BAFTA at least he should have a shot.

Niels Arestrup, familiar to Audiard fans as the father in the BAFTA winning The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De Battre Mon Coeur S’est Arrete), is almost as impressive as the prison heavy, who rules by respect, control and fear, and when called for, violence. Arestrup is the Paul Sorvino Goodfellas character, the gang leader who seems in control and all powerful but deep down is as insecure as everyone else – well aware that not only is he a target for enemies but for ambitious underlings, and that his power is only as strong as his ties to those he controls. Arestrup says so much with just a look here.

A Prophet is Audiard’s best work to date and certainly among the best foreign language films this year, and arguably the best films full stop. The story may not be the most original, often going in directions you imagine it will, but it always feels right, organic, that it should. The prison setting is a familiar one for film goers but it is rarely handled in such a natural way, superbly balancing a sense of honesty, of how such a life would really be, with genuine, driving drama. True life prison story can often be honest but inert. Fiction can be dramatic, uplifting, moving but seldom feels realistic. A Prophet manages in large part to do both.

A truly impressive film.

Along with the Mesrine movies the French have set a high bar this year.