Review: The Counsellor

The Counsellor (2013) 
Dir. Ridley Scott
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz 

  Ridley Scott's follow-up to the divisive Prometheus is considerably at odds with its predecessor; The Counsellor is a godless, sleek, nasty, and thoroughly mean-spirited sort of film. Penned by author Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men and The Road), the story revolves around an unnamed "counsellor" who is a first-time mediator in a major drug deal. Fassbender is predictably right for the role as a well-dressed, wealthy young lawyer, arrogant and decidedly too smooth for his own good. His business partner, a perma-tanned druglord played by Javier Bardem, has a truly reptilian girlfriend in the form of Cameron Diaz, a leopard-print bedecked career criminal with the tacky aesthetic of Donatella Versace. When fatal errors are made, the Mexican drug cartel looks for someone to blame, and that blame lands squarely on the heads of anyone involved.

  As we might expect from McCarthy, the dialogue has a genuine flair for the poetic, the blackly comic, and the philosophical; the film moves through a collection of conversation pieces, each existing unto itself, loosely fashioned into an action thriller's narrative. Much of the critical backlash against the film has been in response to the lack of backstory, characterisation, or extended exposition, but it is often riveting precisely for its ambiguity; it remains involving on a moment-to-moment basis, where explanatory flashbacks would likely feel clumsy. The verbose dialogue is countered by the ramped-up excess of the film; the crass, sleazy, sexually predatory characters who people it; glistening skin, sparklingly modern apartments, fast cars; sheer visual vulgarity. Cheetahs lope gracefully out of smashed-up black Range Rovers; deaths are spectacular and ruthless; beheadings and mutilations leave shivering wrecks of individuals, choking in terror on their own snot. As a weary Mexican barman tells Fassbender, the cartel kill to show that "death has no meaning," - but no one truly believes that, he hastens to add. This is the internal logic of The Counsellor in full - death has no meaning. Nor does life, nor guilt, nor innocence. None have a bearing on the turn of events set into motion by the counsellor's greed and complicity. Such unrepentant nihilism is unusual in a film with stars of this calibre, and it is decidedly untrendy in terms of the box office.

  The Counsellor does hit a few sour notes; it is too grandiose to not feel faintly ridiculous at times. It is understandable that some may find the writing style pompous. Bardem's persona is slightly too determinedly wacky, and Diaz is sometimes cartoonish, played a bit too far against type to always be believable. But Fassbender's lion's share of screen-time, in my view, more than makes up for the others' weaknesses - as does the almost apocalyptic tone. Ultimately, the terrifying, serpentine emptiness at the centre of The Counsellor makes for fascinatingly morbid viewing. To do business with and be left untainted by the vast evil of the faceless Mexican drug cartel is a tall order, indeed - and it's a task that the counsellor himself may or may not be up to handling.

Review: Lee Daniels' The Butler

The Butler (2013)
Dir. Lee Daniels
Starring: Forrest Whittaker, Oprah Winfrey, John Cusack, David Oyelowo

The Butler is the decade-spanning, tearjerking tale of White House butler Cecil Gaines, an African-American man born into abject poverty in the cotton fields of the Deep South, to become one of the longest-serving White House butlers in American history. Its' glowingly expensive production values detail the most turbulent decades of the 20th century, awash in a yellowed, evocative light. It is loosely based on the true story of butler Eugene Allen, who served at the White House from the Eisenhower to the Reagan administrations. In the divisive early years of his work, Cecil is repeatedly told, 'The room should feel empty when you're in it'; not just a butler's instructions but ultimately another encouragement for the silence of Black Americans all over the nation. Many of the strongest points of the film are some of the most vile portions of US history; the humiliation of Civil Rights protestors at lunch counter sit-ins are particularly harrowing, fiercely recalling the shame and disgust of those years.

The family and personal histories of this remarkable man are intertwined with some of the most significant moments of American history; the growing political consciousness of his eldest son peaks along with the headiest days of the Civil Rights movement. A growing rift between father and son's sensibilities reflect the generational struggle of the counterculture years. JFK's assassination is mirrored in a low ebb at home, where Cecil's wife, portrayed fantastically by Oprah Winfrey, has sunken into depressive alcoholism. If any of this seems potentially transparent, this is often the case; at its worst, The Butler has a weepy flair for the melodramatic - and sometimes, the obvious. The superstar cast also is occasionally distracting; while Oprah disappears into her role through sheer talent, the short turns of John Cusack as Richard Nixon and Robin Williams as Dwight D. Eisenhower seem jarringly out-of-place, and closer to caricature. Nonetheless, the inconsistencies of the film are countered by a deeply poignant and colourful tract of the Civil Rights movement; it is effective through its humanism, and through its' demonstratively fascinating subject matter. Cecil does occasionally feel like the Forrest Gump of butlers - witness to too much of the latter half of the 20th century for it not to seem silly.  But such is the nature of the Oscar-baiting melodrama; we can expect a certain amount of bloated self-importance, and in The Butler's case, it becomes easy to overlook. We are almost held hostage to its poignancy, such is the weight and emotional force of the events shown.

 Even with its weaknesses and uneven moments, The Butler's grounding in reality and the strong central performances allow for a compelling historical drama. The victorious, optimistic conclusion- including Barack Obama's 2008 election - may be overstating the positive. Yet a great deal of progress did come, and largely through the achievements of those who fought, and sometimes died, for Civil Rights. Daniels' heartfelt thank you to those who did so, alongside an equally heartfelt, earnest film, may be easy to laugh off or dismiss, for some. But neither trait is worthy of disdain; and while The Butler is heavily flawed, it is redeemable ultimately for its warmth and depth of feeling.

   Currently showing at Nottingham's Broadway Cinema. 

Review: Don Jon (2013)

          Don Jon (2013)
      Dir. Joseph Gordon-Levitt
     Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Tony Danza


    In Joseph Gordon-Levitt's sex comedy Don Jon, a microscope is taken to the love lives of New Jersey's working-class "guidos"in a way that can't help but to feel a little bit condescending. Levitt plays a young, hair-gelled, muscle-bound Italian kid who has a serious porn addiction. He and his macho buddies divide and rate women out of 10, treating them summarily as a collection of body parts.  On one of his many nightclub forays, he comes across a high-maintenance "dime" by the name of Barbara (a particularly impressive collection of body parts, as we are repeatedly reminded) who baits and switches him into a relationship by withholding sex from him.

 It's clear where Gordon-Levitt has sought to level his critique - these tacky Jersey-Shore dwellers are haplessly beholden to the mass media's image of love, sex, and relationships. Their central problem, he opines, is that the poor fools have based their entire identities and expectations around the mountain of unrealistic shit they've been watching; in Jon's case, hardcore pornography, and in Barbara's case, silly romantic comedies. His treatise on the harmful effects of conflating reality with media fantasy does prove entertaining, at times - but the film ultimately falters due to messily-drawn characters.

 Barbara, we are shown, has a childhood bedroom festooned with pink and crystals, has been taught that she will find her perfect Prince Charming, and that her sexuality is a tool to be used to find and keep a man -- even if it means downright manipulation. Yet she is bothered by no more internal subjective depth than is necessary. All of the women in the film, even Julianne Moore's free-spirited widow, are static, fixed points around which Jon moves; they allow our central male character to make important self-discoveries about sex and love, with no room for their own development. This is the same central male character who charmingly remarks in the opening sequence, '....her face is an 8, but her tits are a 4', which hardly endears him to the audience, and should not make him any more inherently redeemable than his bossy female counterpart.

   As something of a rejoinder to its otherwise careless attitude, the film does make slight references to the media-saturated pressure that women are bombarded with constantly. Nonetheless, with no desire to investigate the notion further, any potential for commentary falls flat. What we are left with is an inoffensively obtuse, clumsy attempt at pithy comedy. It is amusing, shallow, and entirely mediocre.

LeftLion Review: Painless (2013)

Painless (2013)

Dir. Juan Carlos Medina

            ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED WITH LEFTLION NOTTINGHAM.

Painless is a film highly informed by the work of Guillermo Del Toro; it has the same meticulous period detail touched with dark bouts of magical realism; the same interest in the brutality of Fascist regimes, particularly that of Franco's Spain; and it continues the rich Spanish cinematic tradition of a fascination with children and the ghosts of the past. Working backward and forward through time, the film begins in 1931 and returns periodically to the present day. Its central idea revolves around the discovery of a group of young children who appear to be completely impervious to physical pain. Because the children have become dangerous to those around them, replete with horrific burns and broken bones, they are taken from their parents and straitjacketed, put indefinitely into solitary confinement in a godforsaken asylum. A medical team is there to learn more about these children, particularly one young boy who shows a capacity for both serene tenderness and shocking violence. Deeply involving, the film intertwines the past and present with a well-paced dual structure, connecting the desperate search of a modern Spanish doctor, David, to the events of recent history. He is told of the war years: 'Forgetting is what matters today', and he is advised repeatedly against digging into the past.

Of course, the children's 'unknown affliction' has both wonderful and terrifying capacities; under the darkening fog of the late 1930's, the concept of an ubermensch soldier is close to the surface of our thoughts. There is no overt suggestion that the children's powers are to be exploited, but had the experiments gone uninterrupted by the breakout of the Spanish Civil War, one can only guess at the dark purposes they may have been used for. Over the course of Franco's regime and the occupation of the Nazis, the asylum's increasingly wretched conditions and litany of cruelty sees an innocent child make a terrifying transformation. The character Berkano's inability to feel – or understand – pain may seem supernatural, but the true horror lies in a very human complicity with violence and oppression. The past haunts and informs the present day - the perverted genesis of David's family history comes to bear on his life in hideous ways. The corrupted ideologies of Fascism and Nazism breed monstrosity in many forms, and forgetting does not excuse or erase it.

As it transpires, the brooding atmospherics of the opening descend into a hellish finale, something of an unfortunate and overwrought conclusion that feels at odds with the subtlety and mood of most of the film. Be that as it may, it is a truly engaging story; an impressive homage to the tradition of European horror. Painless is alive with political allegory that may not be novel, but is still prescient and intensely watchable.

LeftLion Review: The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears

The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears (2013) 

Dir. Bruno Forzani & Helene Cattet 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED WITH LEFTLION NOTTINGHAM. 

 Broadway Cinema's Mayhem Film Festival was in full swing this weekend, showing a vast variety of sub-genres and nationalities. The first film to shown on the Friday evening was the giallo-influenced French horror The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears from creative duo Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Let it be said that attempting to make cohesive narrative sense out of such a film will be a fruitless, frustrating task for many. A psychedelic mishmash of the grotesque and the ornamental, the film appears to involve the disappearance of a businessman's wife, and his search for her through the apartment building where they live. This is a fairly arbitrary framework for utter aural and visual insanity, the locus of which is a havoc-wreaking, shape-shifting woman with terrifying sexual prowess and a propensity for straight razors.

Much of the film takes place in the art nouveau interior of the building they occupy. Its turn of the century architecture, painted glass, and ornately patterned wallpapers are seemingly infused with malice and witchery. A particular ‘beneath the wallpaper’ sequence is claustrophobically terrifying; the setting truly becomes a suffocating, maddening nightmare space. The building itself doubles back on itself deceivingly. Any traditional filmic conception of visual space, ellipsis of time, or dream sequences must be forgotten.

The remarkable, avant-garde sound design is almost sensually preoccupied with the sounds of sinew and flesh splitting under blades, vinyl sliding against skin, zips unzipping, glass breaking, sighs, screams, and moans; a cacophony of teeth-clenching noise. There is a fixation on eyes, with parallelism between pupils dilating and camera lenses focusing; the act of looking is deceptive and horrifying. Obsessive visual motifs litter the film; long hair, black, tentacle-like tendrils of it, shown repetitively as well as muscles straining, veins, sutures, leather, breasts, blades, and red vinyl.  As these motifs repeat and meld into one another, they form a sort of internal logic, a pattern singularly unique to the film.

Post-giallo, Post-Godard, Strange Colour pushes the boundaries of radical non-narrative form, welcoming the beautifully rendered chaos of pure sensory experience. 

  

Mayhem Horror Festival - Day 2 (Nov. 1st)

 

   On the second day of Mayhem, my first screening was the highly anticipated Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, directed by French duo Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani and garnering rave reviews at London Film Festival. A review for LeftLion Nottingham is forthwith, so I won't say too much here. What I can say is that the film is one of the most radically styled, daring, and maddening films of the year. By turns ornamental and grotesque, it is dazzlingly unique and psychedelic. Just don't expect to figure out what's going on.


    Delivery (2013, Dir. Brian Netto), centres around a young couple, Rachel and Kyle Massy, who are expecting their first child on national television, for a reality TV show. Purported to be assembled from the unused footage from that show, the producers abandon their original intent when strange, demonic hauntings begin to find a focal point around Rachel's pregnancy. She becomes convinced that something supernatural has latched itself onto her unborn child, and the found footage aspect plays out accordingly. Animals grow frightened and aggressive in her presence; unexpected noises and voices are picked up on sound recording equipment; Rachel grows taciturn and silent. This is all reasonably well done, particularly the opening section; Netto captures the tacky, cheerfully glossy glow of "lifestyle" TV, setting his couple up to watch them fall, so to speak. Unfortunately, it remains largely rote and paint-by-numbers through most of its running time. Certain portions are harrowing, but the saving grace of the film is its final note of ambiguity - has a demonic force torn its way through these ordinary lives, leaving tragedy in its wake? Or has a mentally ill young woman, wracked with primal terror at her body's vast changes, been exploited by a craven reality TV show? This sole complexity lends a final depth to the film that had otherwise remained an entertaining, if derivative, take on the found footage sub-genre.

Mayhem Horror Festival - Day 1 (Oct. 31st)

   

Last night - Halloween - started off Mayhem Horror Festival at the Broadway Cinema. Horror masterpiece Don't Look Now was set to screen in the chillingly gothic atmosphere of St. Mary's Church. There was a real Autumn chill in the air and a sense of anticipation to see one of world cinema's greats, Nic Roeg, speak in person. The man himself, in conversation with Steven Sheil, was modest, funny, and softly-spoken, discussing the motifs and themes of his film as something of a haphazard experiment. He gives the impression of a director who works very intuitively; he expounded his belief that the right actors 'come to the role' and he cites his fascination with chance, fate, and the odd coincidences of life as the working theme that runs through Don't Look Now. When asked about the intimate sex scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, Roeg shied away from discussing any of the more sordid questions involved (The 'was it real?' debate still raging on,) and focused on the 'return of sensuality' to the couple's marriage after the empty grief that had overwhelmed them.  

   As for the movie itself, the print was faultless. Roeg's nerve-shredding cross-cuts and montage sequences create a deeply unsettling, elegiac framework of memory and grief. The small incidences and vaguely demonic iconography is paired with the steady emotional realism of a man and woman on the verge of losing their precarious grasp on sanity. Venice is a city of shadows, a sort of graveyard in itself; its regal beauty is frozen in the relentless flow of history. It remains one of the most disturbing and ideal settings for any film; a 'city under aspic' as the blind woman says, and one with many faces. Of course, the decadent beauty of Renaissance and Gothic art has always been closely aligned with death, and Roeg's vision of Venice perfectly marries the two. The tension - and confusion - between the earthly and supernatural in Don't Look Now disturbs conventions and ultimately leads to a shock the likes of which few audiences ever forget. 

 (Taken from the Mayhem Fest Facebook Page.)