Review: Frost/Nixon

LIGHTS, CAMERA... TALKING

dir: Ron Howard

starring: Michael Sheen, Frank Langella, Kevin Bacon

You could be forgiven for having been completely unaware of the interviews between talk-show host David Frost and disgraced ex-US President Richard Nixon before the publicity blitz of this film. However, director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan would want you to think that it was one of the most important moments for politics, journalism and basically American culture in modern history, and are willing to spend two hours to convince you of just that. Whether or not you end up believing them is one thing, but you can’t doubt their tenacity and the fact that they very nearly succeed is thanks in no small part to the committed cast, particularly (and unsurprisingly) Michael Sheen and Frank Langella, who serve as the titular acting duet.

Langella may be the one getting all the attention for his stooping, roaring performance as the proud, dying lion that is Richard Nixon, and it is easy to see why. Mimicry being what mimicry is, he naturally and effectively disappears inside the role, and the entire film seems built to serve his performance (even pointing it out as Frost is criticized by his team for allowing Nixon to dominate the early interviews). However, it is Michael Sheen who quietly steals the film away from him, not only bringing the much needed pathos to a film that could otherwise have just been two arrogant men talking to one-another, but also imbuing the film with a surprising lightness of touch. In particular, the early scenes establishing Frost’s character – the loud suits, the self-assured flirting, the ridiculous celebrity embellishments – are very funny in Sheen’s capable grasp. It seems at first that he may just be doing his Tony Blair again, the role that made him famous in both The Deal and The Queen, but so sleight is Sheen’s hand that you won’t notice as the cocky smile weakens and the shifty eyes deepen that he has turned the character completely inside-out.

While the film is all about Frost and Nixon, however, with a cast featuring such heavyweight character actors as Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt, there is some great acting from the sidelines as well, and it all serves as a welcome distraction from the weight of Peter Morgan’s screenplay, which is almost as self-aggrandizing as David Frost himself. Morgan is a fine writer, and as he has proved with The Queen and The Last King Of Scotland, he is extremely adept at making engrossing stories and compelling characters out of episodes of history that wouldn’t immediately seem to lend themselves to theatricalising. Along with Ron Howard, himself a consistently strong, adept filmmaker, he has created an absorbing, well-paced tale (apart from the misjudged documentary structure it has given itself), successfully finding character arcs in what is a very talky piece as the publicity-hungry Frost soon begins to realise that his selfish reasons for wanting to conduct the interviews – fame and fortune in America – pale in comparison to what his team, and the entire American public, expect of them – the trial Nixon never had to face over the Watergate Scandal.

However, Morgan is ultimately unable to escape from the inherent problems that the story itself brings with it. The film obviously fancies itself a call for the necessities of journalism on this age of Fox News, or a topical parable about a despised ex-President marred in scandal being brought to justice (how many Americans must wish that someone like David Frost was around nowadays?) but there is no ignoring the fact that the Frost/Nixon interviews were merely a relatively inconsequential event here being treated as if they were life-and-death.

VERDICT: *** out of *****

Review: Rachel Getting Married

"MARRIED" GETS A WARM RECEPTION

dir: Jonathan Demme

starring: Anne Hathaway, Rosemary DeWitt, Bill Irwin

For such a famous movie star, Anne Hathaway has been on the sidelines through her whole career. Her starring role in The Devil Wears Prada was overshadowed by Meryl Streep, she was is always the forgotten member of the Brokeback Mountain quadruplet, and while her contemporaries such as Rachel McAdams and Michelle Williams have won challenging parts and critical acclaim, she has always been stuck labelled as a “Disney princess” because of her early films The Princess Diaries and Ella Enchanted. So it’s no wonder that she was attracted to her role in Rachel Getting Married. The whole film revolves around her – even the other characters are aware of it (much to their frustration).

Hathaway plays the character of the damaged, emotionally unstable Kym, a recovering drug addict who has been released from rehab for the weekend to attend her sister Rachel’s wedding, and in doing so brings up home truths and past demons which the family had hoped to keep out of such a beautiful occasion. However, while Hathaway serves as the catalyst for events, the film is a true ensemble and is about all the guests and party-goers – much like a real wedding.

Director Jonathan Demme and his cinematographer Declan Quinn do a great job creating the atmosphere of a real wedding video. The whole film is shot in a hand-held, home-movie style, with characters often acknowledging the camera and sometimes the other cameras in the room even getting in the shot. However, this style is often at odds with the random bursts of melodrama that Jenny Lumet’s (daughter of the great director Sidney Lumet) screenplay delivers. Demme makes sure that his self-aware filmmaking technique is reigned back for such scenes, so as to allow them to speak for themselves, but even that can’t save misjudged moments such as Kym’s confrontation with her estranged mother (Debra Winger). The skeleton that lies in the closet of the family’s past also seems a little bit over-the-top for such an intimate, otherwise unsentimental film. Once it has been revealed, you start to question how realistic it would be for Kym and Rachel to share the banter that they do.

Such criticisms do little to ruin the great multi-cultural spirit that the entire cast and crew work to create, however. There is no formal “score”, but music is extremely important to the film, which is full of diagetic world music that comes from different sources from the wedding band playing constantly all weekend (in a humorous in-joke) to the groom’s sweet a capella performance of Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend”, and although we don’t meet every guest at the wedding, we observe everyone as Demme’s roaming cameras capture the ever present ensemble cast filling out the scenes like background furniture.

Of the characters that we do become familiar with, however, from Rachel’s groom (TV On The Radio front-man Tunde Adebimpe) and his best man (and the story’s awkwardly forced love-interest for Kym) to Rachel’s best friend and bridesmaid, it is Rosemary DeWitt as the titular bride-to-be, Rachel, and Bill Irwin as her and Kym’s big hearted but oblivious father who particularly stand out. Along with Hathaway, the three perform a great triumvirate of simmering tension and convincing familial bond. DeWitt especially has a tough role to play as she has to convince us that not only is the doe-eyed, former sweet-natured Disney princess Hathaway a selfish attention-seeker undeserving of such consideration, but also show us why even Rachel herself ignores all else to pander to her sister’s insecurities.

Which of course, as the film itself does, brings it back to Anne Hathaway, who obviously saw the career-changing potential in her character, at one moment delivering a icy, deadpan quip and at another suffering an hysterical breakdown, and she approaches it with relish. It is not an easy part to play, and to her credit, Hathaway doesn’t shy away from the unlikeable aspects of Kym’s character, of which there are many. The screenplay asks us to do as her family does, and if we can’t like her or understand her, we at least have to accept her. And it is this spirit that will resonate with you long after you have left the cinema. The film may have its flaws, but it is so forgiving and understanding of the flaws of its inhabitants that you can’t help but respond in kind.

VERDICT: *** out of *****

Review: Valkyrie

THE CRUISE-UAL SUSPECTS

dir: Bryan Singer

starring: Tom Cruise, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy

Most thrillers rely on a sense of mystery, that is the point of them - to thrill the audience to the edge of their seats wondering “what is going to happen next?” So how do you build a thriller around a story of which the audience knows the outcome right from the start? This is the case with Valkyrie, based on the conspiracy to kill Hitler by a group of his own Nazi generals, and I don’t think any journalistic codes of ethics are being broken when I tell you that the plot fails. Not only that, but the film has been plagued by pre-release rumours and speculation about everything from test audiences panning it to critics writing it off before they had even seen it simply because Tom Cruise doesn’t attempt a German accent. However, from this has been crafted a tense, engrossing war thriller.

Director Bryan Singer is back in the territory of his breakthrough film, The Usual Suspects: a group of plotters involved in a plan in which everything goes horrifyingly wrong. Throughout his career, from Suspects to first two X-Men movies (i.e. the good ones) and Superman Returns, Singer has never made a dud, so why pundits thought it would end up being so is probably the biggest mystery of the entire film. Along with the likes of Robert Altman and Paul Thomas Anderson, Singer is one of the best in the business at shepherding an ensemble cast, and the way he does so here is one of the film’s major strengths. He works masterfully in introducing us to the major figures in the plot, allowing us to tell them apart, explaining their roles and suggesting their differences and, to his credit, never allows proceedings to simply deteriorate into a star vehicle for Cruise, who provides a perfectly fine anchor for the story to centre around (say what you will about Tom, no one does defiant heroism like him).

The taut and crisply paced direction is aided in no small way by the skilfully efficient screenplay (from Nathan Alexander and Usual Suspects writer Christopher McQuarrie). The film is built around the idea that the biggest plans revolve around the tiny details, and it spares none of them yet still manages to make such a complex story coherent and seem almost straightforward. However, this almost complete submission to the plot does sacrifice attention to the characters.

Colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg, the man who engineered the entire plan, is clearly an interesting and complex character – a career military man and a Nazi who is willing to risk everything, even the safety of his own family, to kill Hitler, yet Tom Cruise never has the opportunity to play him as anything but intense and determined. We see the group discuss the morality of murdering Hitler rather than simply overthrowing him and whether the risk of the plot is worth it with the Allied forces looming over Belin, but we never find out why Stauffenberg, or any of the other members of the conspiracy, have gone from Nazi generals to deciding to rid themselves of their Führer. Although maybe the audience’s own knowledge of history is supposed to fill in those plot points for us. Who needs a “reason” for wanting to murder Adolf Hitler?

With this knowledge of history in mind, it is perhaps surprising that the greatest success of Valkyrie is that there are still genuine twists. The makers of the film have been blessed with the fact that the details of the plot are still relatively obscure, so although we know that the bomb intended to kill Hitler did not succeed, it is the aftermath of this sequence which is the most intriguing. The plot fails at about the halfway point of the story, and I guarantee that everything that takes place afterwards will be news to you, and that despite yourself, you will end up on the edge of your seat wondering how it is going to end.

VERDICT: *** out of *****

Review: The Wrestler

DO YOU SMELL WHAT THE ROURKE IS COOKIN'?

dir: Darren Aronofsky

starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood

The underdog and the comeback are the staples of the sports movie genre, from The Champ to Rudy, even Mr. Baseball, and The Wrestler is no different. However, this time, the plucky challengers fighting against the odds and one-time heroes looking to get back on top are the off-screen stories, rather than on.

Mickey Rourke plays the wrestler in question: a washed-up, battered one-time 80’s icon considered past his prime by anyone who cares to remember him, a character so close to Rourke’s own real-life story of a career self-destructed by drugs, fights and bad decisions that almost from the beginning of the film, the line between how much of the performance is an act and how much is real becomes blurred. You will have heard a lot in the media about his comeback role as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a former professional wrestling star now working for a pittance on the independent circuit, forced to live in a trailer park and make ends meet by manning the deli at a supermarket, and it is well deserved, but if you’re looking for an equally uplifting story on-screen, you’ve come to the wrong place. Although Randy dreams of one day stepping back into the ring for the big leagues, this ain’t no Rocky. Randy is a “broken down piece of meat”, not a contenduh, and there isn’t much in the way of character arcs or sentimental scenes of triumph or overcoming adversity, but that is what one should expect from director Darren Aronofsky, he who directed the unrelenting, freaky-deaky Requiem For A Dream.

If Rourke is the comeback, then Aronofsky is the underdog of this particular sports-movie cliché. After the critical mauling that met his criminally misunderstood The Fountain, he seems to have dismissed the overly cinematic flourishes and visual embellishments that have marked his work so far and gone in the complete opposite direction, creating a small, low-budget character study, with the focus being on the atmosphere and sense of place, and it is this aspect in which The Wrestler scores on every level. His hand-held camera follows Rourke from shabby school gyms and grubby community centers to seedy strip joints (where Randy meets his favorite stripper and the only person who understands him, Cassidy, played winningly and with great naturalism by her of the perennial heart-of-gold, Marissa Tomei) and, of course, into the wrestling ring, which is captured perfectly. As Rourke and his fellow wrestlers (all played by real-life independent professionals) leap off ladders into barbed wire-tables and bounce off the ropes into a body-crunching move from their opponent, you can’t help but pity them. Randy’s limited self-worth and belief that it is all he can do have driven him to this. The authenticity that Aronofsky captures works wonders in enhancing Mickey Rourke’s already moving performance, but to his credit, Rourke never allows the film to become a downer. It may seem like an easy performance for him, as Randy is characterized by the grotesque physical features (the swollen face, the leathery, fake-tanned skin) that define Rourke himself, but with his self-deprecating sense of humour he comes across as a likeable chump while a lesser actor (such as the studio’s terrible first choice for the role, Nicholas Cage) may have used the excuse to emote and “act”.

However, not everything operates on this level. The script, in particular, is predictable and contains some awkward moments (particularly when Randy goes and sees his estranged daughter, played by Evan Rachel Wood who, to her credit, almost overcomes the clunky dialogue written for her). The story is merely a stage on which to display Rourke and Aronofsky’s work, but even the director himself makes some bad decisions. When Randy walks through the back of the supermarket, about to walk through the plastic curtains onto the deli counter, did we really need the dubbed-over crowd noise to understand the parallel between this and Randy walking backstage at a wrestling show? However, such faults are minor compared to the film’s achievements. Randy The Ram may be a “one-trick pony”, but The Wrestler is definitely a contender.

VERDICT: **** out of *****

Review: Defiance

BOND OF BROTHERS

dir: Edward Zwick

starring: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell

Hollywood has always been fascinated with the Holocaust, and it’s easy to see why. Without wanting to sound too crass, it has all the elements that great stories are made of – the conflict between good and evil, the idea of mortality, the questioning or reconfirmation of faith. It was a period of history that explored the very extremes of humanity, but so far, the majority of stories told about this most horrific episode in our history have been about the destruction of the Jews, going to their unavoidable deaths with dignity. Defiance, we are told, is different. Here, the Jews fight back.

It certainly is an intriguing true story, ripe with cinematic promise. In Belorussia, 1941, three brothers are forced to flee the Nazis, hiding in the forest where they lead their fellow survivors into creating a new community. There, they struggle over the choices that their actions have left them with – Tulvia (Daniel Craig), world-weary and noble, wishes to live their new lives in secret, Zus (Liev Schreiber), violent and intense, is desperate to get revenge on their oppressors, while little brother Asrael (Jamie Bell) is caught in the middle.

That is about as deep as any of the characters go, as Defiance is not a film concerned with individual people but with the lives of the community as a whole. The disparate band of survivors are painted with broad, clichéd strokes (intellectual, philosopher, bastard), designed to simply represent the different aspects of society, and our three central heroes struggle to create any chemistry that would suggest real brotherhood, meaning that by the time we arrive at the action scenes, we really don’t care who lives or who dies.

And the action scenes do arrive, for this is a film in which, lest we forget, the Jews fight back. However, shoehorned in at regular intervals, just when the scenes of day-to-day life in the forest camp start to get tedious, they seem almost calculated to smother a Hollywood sheen over the story, as if the studio was afraid that the rest of the film just wasn’t interesting enough, and they may have had a point. For while the tale of the Bielski brothers is certainly worthy of telling, in the hands of director Edward Zwick, it comes across as uneven, not sure whether it wants to be serious entertainment or just serious.

Zwick is a director with honourable intentions with an interest in telling stories about the struggles that different cultures have had to face. However, he seems to be genuinely unaware that his films always use the plights of minorities simply as a device to redeem his white heroes, from the white commanding officer shepherding the black soldiers in Glory to the white American hero saving the dying-way of the Japanese warriors in The Last Samurai or the white smuggler protecting the African from his own social naivety in Blood Diamond. Defiance is no different, and in the end there is no escaping the slightly uncomfortable image of the decidedly un-Semitic looking Daniel Craig nobly leading the helpless Jews to safety. Make no mistake, despite the promises that the film seems to make at the start, the Jews are still the victims here – moaning and complaining, in desperate need of someone to protect them. If this is as close as Hollywood can get to  changing those preconceptions, then it seems like the Jews really do need to fight back.

VERDICT: ** out of *****

Review: Slumdog Millionaire

The first of my film reviews. In honour of tomorrow's Oscar nominations, in which this film is presumably going to do extremely well, here is my review of...

BOYLE GOES SLUMMING

dir: Danny Boyle

starring: Dev Patel, Frieda Pinto, Irfan Khan

Danny Boyle is, his CV would suggest, a director with the filmmaking equivalent of ADHD. From the darkly comic thriller Shallow Grave to the rom-com on the run A Life Less Ordinary and the post-apocalyptic horror 28 Days Layer, he is constantly jumping with gleeful energy from one genre to the next, never allowing himself to make the same film twice. So it shouldn’t have really come as a surprise that he chose to make his newest project about “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”. Not only that, but the Indian version.

Jamal Malik (played in his adolescent incarnation by Skins’ Dev Patel) is accused of cheating when he is one question away from winning the jackpot on the show, and must explain to the police how he came to know the seemingly random answers – which, of course, lie in his past as an orphaned street urchin living in the slums of Mumbai. The story jumps back-and-forth between the investigation, the quiz show, and a series of vignettes set in Jamal’s childhood. From there, there’s some stuff about destiny and True Love conquering all, but that is besides the point. Danny Boyle has never allowed his films to be dominated by story, which may possibly explain his inconsistent filmography, which is as shaky as the camera he uses to excitably chase his actors around with. For each hit he makes such as Trainspotting, he has a misjudged flop like The Beach up his sleeve, but the throughline of his career has been the energy, and Slumdog is no different.

As usual, Boyle directs with a hyper-kinetic, foot-stomping vitality and at first you’ll be glad to come along for the ride. With so much happening on screen, you won’t notice the limited emotional range of his actors, hidden behind the frenzied editing and vividly saturated colours of the cinematography. However, after a while, “frenzied” becomes “exhausting”, “vividy saturated” becomes “garish” and the weaknesses of Simon Beaufoy’s (The Full Monty) uneven screenplay become glaringly obvious. For with the gimmicky narrative hook determining the focus of the film, rather than the characters, this is one film where the story is the star, not Boyle’s directing, and this is where it all starts to fall apart.

The constant flashbacks for each question (which, by a wild coincidence, when taken in order correspond chronologically with traumas in Jamal’s young life) leads to the movie unfolding in a stop-and-start fashion that kills any suspense and robs the film of the energy that Boyle heroically tries to maintain for its entirety and ultimately become distracting. As these episodic vignettes become more and more repetitive (yes, we understand, growing up as an orphan in the slums was horrific, although the excitement and vitality that Danny Boyle has clearly found in Mumbai seems to be at odds with this message) they become a distraction from the quiz show element of the film, which becomes the most interesting of the many plots. Will Jamal win? What will happen if he does? And has it been rigged by the suspicious-looking host (you can’t imagine Chris Tarrant acting so horribly to one of the English contestants)?  Not that any of these questions matter, of course, as we are told from the beginning of the film that Jamal’s destiny “is written”. Nothing the audience feels and no plot obstacle dreamed up could possibly alter it, making any kind of interest we have in rooting for our protagonist to overcome the odds ultimately redundant.

Never losing his eye for the cinematic, Boyle ends with a clever, well-judged homage to the Bollywood movies that surely inspired him throughout the making of the film, but by the time the finale comes around, you’ll be so worn out and fatigued it’s just more white noise you feel you need sit through lest you miss the one vital moment that reveals the answer to the most important question at the heart of Slumdog Millionaire – why everyone seems to have fallen in love with this film.

VERDICT: ** out of *****