Rev Stan's film blog

Nearly flawless Lawless

Love John Hillcoat's work. He takes gritty realism to a new level and The Proposition is one of my favourite films.

With a cast that includes Tom Hardy, Mia Wasicowska, Jessica Chastain, Guy Pearce AND Gary Oldman his new prohibition era film could only be a winner even if it did have Shia LaBeouf in the lead. Indeed it seems Hillboat even works his magic on him.

Lawless is based on a true story about three brothers who run a moonshine business in 1930s Virginia. The middle brother, Forrest (Hardy) is the stuff of legend defying death in war when all those around him are slaughtered. Eldest brother Howard enjoys tasting the fruits of their labours but is handy in a fight and fiercely loyal. Youngest brother Jack (LaBeouf) doesn't quite live up to the reputations of his elder brothers but is desperate to make his mark and be taken seriously.

The local cops don't so much turn a blind eye to the illicit selling of home made booze but are big purchasers, almost protection officers. All is in balance until a new uber Sheriff turns up (Guy Pearce) who isn't so much interested in enforcing the law as taking a big slice of the business. When Forrest refuses a tense and sometimes extremely violent battle ensues.

And it has all Hillcoat's trademarks: the realistic, brutal violence, minimal dialogue and the dirt and dust of the era which make for a tense and engaging thriller.

Tom Hardy gives a superbly understated performance developing a tell-all grunt to the point that when he does speak more than one word the fact that his dialogue is sometimes buried in his gravely, mumbling American accent is almost irrelevant. But, for a man of few words, he quickly has you rooting for him, in part due to his idiotic younger brother's propensity to rashness that threatens their livelihoods and lives.

Guy Pearce is deliciously nasty and continually proves what a versatile actor he is. While relative new comer Dane DeHaan, whom I first noticed in the superb low budget Chronicle, reminds me of a young Leonardo DiCaprio here playing Cricket Pate the crippled friend of Jack's who has the technical know-how for distilling and souping-up cars.

If I was going to grumble (aside from the lost dialogue) then it is the shameful lack of screen time given to Gary Oldman as an uber-villain from the city. He steals his two scenes, naturally.

Lawless will certainly been an addition to my DVD collection of favourite gang thrillers, sitting nicely alongside The Proposition and The Departed, it's getting 89% from me. On IMDb it has 72% from critics and a Metacritic score of 58% while on Rotten Tomatoes it has 66% from critics and 81% of users have given it 3.5 stars or higher.

 

Brilliant marriage of thriller and black comedy: Killer Joe

Killer Joe is dark, brutal, funny and unexpected. Marrying humour with terror is a great skill and here it is done beautifully.

The premise is that when a young man's trailer trash mum nicks his stash leaving him in debt with his dealer he decides to hire a hit man to kill her for her life insurance money.

Superb cast particularly enjoyed (and was surprised by) Matthew McConaughey as the cop with a dark sideline and Juno Temple, as the innocent little sister, just goes from strength to strength. Emile Hirsch who plays the young man continues to makes interesting choices and is certainly on my list of actors to follow. 

I'm going to give it 80%. On IMDb is has 74% and has yet to get a Metacritic score. On Rotten Tomatoes it has 88% from critics and 80% of site visitors gave it three and a half stars or more.

 

Am I the only one who didn't like gritty Brit flick Kill List?

Now I must clarify, I didn't wholly dislike Kill List. It is a master class in suspense and tension. It's just that it got to a certain point, about three quarters of the way through, when the turn of events  made me go 'what the f***?'. And not in a good way.

It starts off very ordinary. Husband and wife Jay and Shel (Neil Maskell and MyAnna Buring) are going through a rough patch. Jay hasn't worked as a sales rep for eight months and it's putting a strain on their marriage. His friend and colleague Gal (Michael Smiley) comes to dinner with his new girlfriend Fiona (Emma Fryer) and persuade him to go back to work. It quickly becomes obvious that they are not actually sales reps but hit men.

The two embark on a job that involves three kills but there is something odd about this job. The man that hired them isn't quite what he seems and neither is Fiona.

*spoiler alert* All well and good, tension building nicely, lots of intrigue, then bam from out of nowhere comes this straw-mask wearing cult who dance around naked and make human sacrifices. It all gets a bit silly from then on, although there is a brutally perverse twist at the end. I'm not adverse to a curve ball in a plot, far from it, but I just didn't get it and it disappointed me to the point of feeling cross.

The difficult Hanna review and the marvellous Tom Hollander

Tricky one this hence why it's taken me a week to get around to writing it. Tricky because I'm not quite sure what to make of Joe Wright's new movie Hanna.

In an interview he said he wanted to create a film that wasn't easy to pigeon-hole into a particular genre. So maybe it's me reacting to the fact that I can't decide what type of film it is or maybe Joe Wright has got it wrong.

To rewind a little, the story is that Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) has been raised by her father Erik (Eric Bana) in isolation, in the frozen north of Finland, to be an assassin. The time comes when she must go and complete the job she has been trained for which is to kill CIA bigwig Marissa (Cate Blanchett). But there is more to Hanna's past and her mission than meets the eye.

You could describe it as a chase movie as Hanna is pursued across Europe, discovering the truth along the way.

First, the problems I have with it:

a) It is very violent and brutal for a film which is essentially about a teenage assassin and this isn't in the comic book vein like Kick Ass.

Facing the fear in Buried

At today's midday screening of Buried, a couple were buying Bloody Marys to take in with them. Rather than thinking it a little early for alcohol I actually contemplated swapping my green tea order for the same thing. I certainly needed a stiff drink when I came out of the cinema.

Buried is one of those films that I debated seeing because I wasn't sure whether the discomfort of watching it would outweigh the enjoyment. Just reading about the premise of a man waking up to find that he's been buried alive in a coffin made my hands sweat a little.

It is certainly a film that makes you squirm in your seat but I'm really glad I confronted my fear. Well as much as you can confront a fear of very confined spaces while sat in an airy cinema.

The entire film is set in the coffin. It's a brave move that could fall flat as the challenge of keeping the action flowing is substantially increased when the central character can't go anywhere and has limited props with which to interact.

As the story unfolds we discover that Paul Conroy, the man in the coffin played superbly by Ryan Reynolds* is a civilian working in Iraq as a truck driver and his convoy was ambushed. He has been buried with a cigarette lighter, torch and a mobile phone. Incidentally I think the fact that the mobile has a signal underground albeit probably only a few feet down is a little bit of a stretch of the imagination when I can barely get a signal in the kitchen of my nearly central London flat. 

Buried is a race against time to rescue Paul before his oxygen runs out without being able to see any of the race. But that is what makes it so engaging as the story is told entirely from the victims perspective. It heightens the fear and frustration because you only see and hear what Paul sees and hears. Like the character you never know how near or far his rescuers are.

Sunday film dilemma

Time for one film but there are three I want to see:

Gasper Noe's Enter the Void

Loved the trailer but the synopsis sounds like it could turn into something, well, for want of a better word, a bit wanky. A friend has just sent me Irreversible to watch on DVD which he described as 'the most disturbing film' he'd seen. Which kind of makes me want to watch Enter the Void as I like to be shocked. Does that make me weird?

Buried

Despite trying not to be influenced by reviews I saw that this is rating very highly on Rotten Tomatoes. Problem is being buried alive is one of my ultimate fears. My hands are starting to sweat just thinking about it. Will it be just too uncomfortable viewing?

Made in Dagenham

Saw a rough cut of this in a test screening about a year ago so I'm curious to see the final product. At the time I think I was quite harsh in my comments on the post screening questionnaire but I was tired and had got drenched on the way to the cinema so that may have influenced things.

Cherry Tree Lane

There is something confusing about Brit flick Cherry Tree Lane and it isn't the plot. That is simple enough: Middle class couple eating dinner in their nice home, son is out at football, doorbell rings and they are attacked and held captive by a group of their son's acquaintances who await his return to enact revenge for 'grassing'.

The confusion comes because I don't understand what Paul Andrew Williams really wants to convey with this film.

It has some quite artistic cinematography. All very nice but lingering extreme close ups, shot with minimal depth of field, don't add anything when the film merely skims the surface of the story, foregoing any attempt to get beneath the skin of the characters or plot.

The opening scene hints that there is discord between the parents but this is never explained, explored or even revisited.

The son's misdemeanour, that earns the wrath of this group of teens, isn't explained either. And we learn little about the hoodies to challenge perceptions hints of back story are fleeting and left unexplored.

Without knowing the characters' motives or the consequences of their action you are left with something that is supposed to be a tense thriller but just frustrates.

22 Bullets - well I really enjoyed it anyway

French writer, director and actor Richard Berry has based 22 Bullets loosely on the story of Marseille mafia boss Jacky Imbert who was shot 22 times and survived albeit having lost the feeling in his right hand.

Berry constructed the story around this incident, Jacky becomes Charly Mattei, played by the wonderful Jean Leno, who is gunned down after retiring from the business. His past having caught up with him and despite not being able to use his right hand he sets about enacting revenge on his would-be assassin's. 

Yes 22 Bullets is violent to the point of having to look away a couple of times and there are some cliched gangster movie motives such as Charly's love of opera but underneath that it is a character piece about  childhood friends whose life's philosophies are based on two fundamentally different premises.

Charly and Tony Zacchia (Kad Merad) who is now the Mafia-chief about Marseille town had sworn to stick together through life and death but while Charly believes he can gain some sort of redemption from turning his back on his former life and living quietly and modestly with his family and a young son Anatole (a great performance from Max Baissette De Malglaive), Zacchia believes that blood on the hands can never be washed off and all evil deeds are therefore equal.

By giving the characters history and lives with families and responsibilities outside the crimeworld, Berry has given this gangster flick more depth and dare I say it a bit of soul. That isn't to say that it isn't a taut edge of your seat suspense thriller because it is that too although I know the mix hasn't sat too well with some reviewers (see below).

Great film, I really enjoyed it.

Professional reviews:

Interesting that the Herald mentions A Prophet and Mesrine, the latter I really enjoyed but the former I didn't quite feel lived up to the hype:

EmpireOnline gave it just two stars concluding: "Despite being based on a true-life Marseilles gangland story and a towering Reno turn, Richard Berry's thriller is an uneven stew of character development, violence and sub-Top Gear car chases. Disappointing."

HeraldScotland gave it three stars: Set beside French game changers such as A Prophet and the Mesrine duo, it can at times feel as dated as an old Johnny Hallyday track.

Did Rapt have me rapt?

Blimey, yet more French cinema. I'm beginning to wonder whether the Curzon bought a job lot...not that I'm complaining there has been some great french cinema in recent years. But will Rapt be classed among them?

It is certainly a fresh take on the standard kidnapping yarn. Neither rich industrialist Stanislas Graff (Yvan Attal) or his wife and family bargain on quite how a life changing experience his kidnapping will be for start.

*potential plot spoilers* Aside from the more usual trauma - these kidnappers show they mean business by cutting off one of Stan's fingers and posting it before even so much as writing a ransom note - there are all the sordid little details of his past which the police and, disasterously, the press unearth.

If the affairs and love nests aren't bad enough there is the expensive gambling habit which means that Stan isn't quite as rich as the kidnappers think which, inevitably, leads to some questioning whether the whole thing hasn't been elaborately staged.

There is something unsatisfying about Inception

Christopher Nolan wowed us with The Dark Knight  and so Inception was naturally highly anticipated and, in many ways, it does live up to expectation.

There are some jaw-dropping set pieces and incredible effects in it, almost worth the DVD alone if the behind the scenes extra's are up to muster. And the basic concept of being able sneak around in someone else's dreams with the motive of stealing from them or planting an idea refreshingly original.

But here's the rub, it's all a bit too over conceptualised. It's almost as if Nolan was trying to out-clever himself. The result is that you are left clinging on to the bits of plot you understand while watching the waves of the rest of it wash away. It leaves you feeling almost as soggy as Leonardo diCaprio's character Cobb when he is dunked in a bath of cold water to wake him up.

Perhaps the concept of time increasing the deeper into the consciousness Cobb and his team travel, relative to the 'real time', is a device to help the audience keep up but after a while, you just want them to get on with it.

Indeed for a film that is essentially set in people's dreams it lacks any humour. Maybe Nolan never has dreams that are a little bit silly.