The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) – M. Scorsese

I stayed away from this film for a decade, perhaps because of its 3-hour length or maybe because of my general disinterest in Leonardo DiCaprio.  Also, I’m not a big fan of 1980s-styled greedy power-hungry capitalist jerks (I would say Gordon Gekko but I’ve never watched Wall Street).  But with time on my hands and a director like Scorsese, I decided to give it a try. And right out of the gates, I’m getting a very strong Goodfellas vibe (from the voiceover) – but perhaps just those scenes where Ray Liotta starts getting into drugs?  But wait, is Wolf actually a comedy?  Leo and stockbroker partner Jonah Hill are going way over the top – and so is Scorsese.  This could be a self-parody. The story echoes Goodfellas too: true story, life of crime, busted by the FBI, turn in your friends and write a book. We accepted the moral ambivalence of the gangsters in the earlier movie but never really identified with them because they were scary and violent.  Here, as I said, these guys are jerks – hard partying drug-users who use women for sex (cheating on their wives, even when chosen as trophies alone, such as Margot Robbie) and screwing over everyone who will trust them with a dollar. These are the kind of bros that we could do without.  But Scorsese pumps up the adrenalin, makes it all larger than life – and doesn’t quite indict us (or Leo) for finding it fun.  In the end, I’m not sure we should fault a director for repeating himself (particularly one like Scorsese whose output is so varied already) when it takes amazing technique to pull something like this off.  I just was just hoping for a bit of a message here rather than an anthem to bad boys (that is probably celebrated by today’s bad boys).

Oculus (2013)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Oculus (2013) – M. Flanagan

I feel like I’m slumming it when I dip my toes into the horror genre these days – too few pearls in these oysters. Yet, Oculus had some fairly positive reviews and I enjoyed director Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House (2018) mini-series (but not his update of The Shining called Doctor Sleep, 2019). I guess I was willing to take a risk on a film about a haunted mirror due to my undying love of Ealing Studios’ horror anthology Dead of Night (1945) which included such a story directed by Robert Hamer; there is also a haunted mirror episode in Amicus’ From Beyond the Grave (1974) starring David Warner.  Oculus doesn’t quite follow from these (or other genre clichés) but instead seems to take place after one of these episodes with a haunted mirror has already taken place. Indeed, the movie shows us current events – when a sister (Karen Gillan) and brother (Brenton Thwaites) manage to find a suspected haunted mirror from their youth (that led to some horrible outcome for their parents) and attempt to document its supernatural properties and/or destroy it. Half the movie is flashbacks to the original events and these are far scarier than the “framing” story involving the adult kids (which is a little confusing because the mirror is able to alter what they perceive). Yet somehow the theme that the director seems to want to discuss (childhood trauma and its effects on adults) isn’t really explored and the film opts to tie up its conclusion in a neat (and foreshadowed) bow.  I guess this makes it better than the many horror outings with incomprehensible plots.  However, Flanagan seems to need more time to fully develop his themes (as in Hill House).

 

Philomena (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Philomena (2013) – S. Frears

Basically, a two-hander for Judi Dench and Steve Coogan – and both actors acquit themselves admirably.  Dench, as the elderly Irish woman searching for her son (who had been removed from her by nuns after a teen pregnancy) and Coogan, as the out-of-work journalist who takes up her “human interest” story (approached originally with disdain).  Dench does a fine job of disappearing into her role and Coogan, well, how could he? The good thing about Coogan is that his schtick is genuinely amusing and even in subdued mode here, he still brings added comic value just because it’s him.  Stephen Frears is by now a truly mainstream director and he adds polish to the proceedings, keeping things interesting, as the pair gets closer and closer to the truth.  Although the premise for the film might easily be perceived as political (another failing of the Catholic Church), the script does not go for the jugular but instead lets everyone off relatively easy (noting implicitly how faith has led people to err in many ways, perhaps including Dench’s character).  All told, an easy watch for those times when you don’t have brainpower for something challenging.

Side Effects (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆

Side Effects (2013) – S. Soderbergh

I haven’t been watching every Soderbergh film; he seems very hit or miss -- or somewhere in between, as with this film.  Of course, this probably isn’t the place to debate auteur theory but the variability in his output is probably due to other people, such as the writer -- in this case, Scott Z. Burns.  Presumably, Burns is responsible for the plot which is very au courant for 2013, positing that side effects of medication might remove someone’s culpability for a crime. Rooney Mara plays Emily, a twenty-something who is depressed (her husband has just served time for insider trading); after a presumed suicide attempt, her psychiatrist (Jude Law) prescribes her a series of anti-depressants, concluding with one that a friend recommended to her (after seeing ads on TV) that has a side effect of sleepwalking.  When she commits a murder while sleepwalking, the legal issues revolve around who is to blame – Emily, her prescribing doctor, or even Big Pharma.  If it sounds as though I’ve provided spoilers here, suffice it to say that the plot does not really resolve this quandary but instead takes its characters (including Emily’s previous psychiatrist played by Catherine Zeta Jones) into much more complicated (some might say ludicrous) territory.  To be honest, I’m not sure I fully buy (or understand) the resolution, but thrillers sell and incisive investigations into serious issues probably don’t.  Entertaining enough, I guess.

Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013) – F. Pavich

Alejandro Jodorowsky was set to make a film of Frank Herbert’s Dune in 1974 or 1975 (after his success with El Topo, 1970, and The Holy Mountain, 1973 – two classic “midnight movies”) but it all fell through.  Frank Pavich’s documentary tells us how amazing the film could have been.  Plenty of the film is interview footage with Jodorowsky himself and this may sound dry but if you haven’t seen the man talk before, you’ll be blown away by how passionate and engaging he can be.  He was 84 at the time and he went on to make two new films (Dance of Reality, 2014, and Endless Poetry, 2016) after this; he is currently 90 and I hope he makes more.  Dune would have been his take on science fiction and, in the spirit of The Holy Mountain, he sought to find some “spiritual warriors” to collaborate with him on the production.  The list of names is astounding:  Dan O’Bannon (special effects), Moebius (story boards, production design), Chris Foss (art), H. R. Giger (art), Salvador Dali (actor), Mick Jagger (actor), David Carradine (actor), Pink Floyd (music), Magma (music), and Brontis Jodorowsky (actor).  The film buff will know that a number of these collaborators (principally O’Bannon and Giger) went on to contribute to Alien (1979) and the storyboards (put together in an amazingly fat hardcover book distributed to studios in 1974) suggest that some of Dune’s ideas were recycled for that film.  Moreover, a case is made that Star Wars (1977) also benefited from Jodorowsky’s take on science fiction.  Pavich and his team do a great job of animating some of Moebius’s drawings in this film.  Whether Jodorowsky could have brought the project home (and within budget), we’ll never know (and surely some of the ravings here must be pure fantasy) but it is incredible to hear what might have been.

Mystery Road (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆

Mystery Road (2013) – I. Sen

Aaron Pedersen plays an outback New South Wales detective named Jay Swan who faces racism and a community in crisis as the only Indigenous cop on the force.  When a young girl turns up murdered, his investigation (hamstrung by racism and a lack of interest from his sergeant) leads him to a drug ring.  Hugo Weaving plays the head of the drug squad, who may or may not be corrupt – he certainly seems dodgy (played with typical finesse by Weaving).  He also implies that Swan does not have his own house in order – he is estranged from his wife, now seemingly addicted to booze and pokies, and his teenage daughter may be involved in drugs and possible prostitution.  Needless to say, Pedersen plays the character as extremely tense and gruff.  I’m not sure he smiles at any point in the film.  The script infers that he is stuck in the middle, prosecuting people from his culture on behalf of the whitefellas in control – and some of the residents of the town, both black and white, treat him as a pariah.  It’s a lonely film noir-ish existence (albeit in a “western” setting). Although Pedersen and Weaving are solid, minor characters don’t always seem to have the same acting chops – and the screenplay spends too much time having actors deliver exposition, rather awkwardly. I confess I didn’t quite follow the final machinations of the plot (which may be the result of too little attention paid to some of the nondescript baddies).  Yet the cinematography looks great and some of the dusty outback locations are scenic (but would you want to live there?); some valuable glimpses (if not insights) into a suffering community are also on offer.  Later this spawned a sequel and then a TV mini-series, where it probably would fit best, since the cop drama is a tried and true genre on the small screen. 

Words and Pictures (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆

Words and Pictures (2013) – F. Schepisi

On the up side, Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche inhabit their somewhat clichéd characters and bring them to life.  He plays against type as an alcoholic English teacher, nerdy enough to love word games but feeling more and more like a fraud with his poetic inspiration long departed.  She shows us a character it seems like she has played before, a cold professional with high standards who has a secret soft and lovable side, struggling with rheumatoid arthritis that threatens to destroy her art career.  On the down side, these two actors/characters are stranded in a plot that tries to combine Dead Poets Society with, I don’t know, some romance movie (which is not a genre I tend to watch a lot).  They work for a private high school in the US (the film is in English and Owen sports an American accent) and he comes up with the (sophomoric) idea to have a “war” between words and pictures that pits his Honours English class against her Art Honours class (although they do share students).  It doesn’t take long before someone utters the “A picture is worth…” phrase.  There are a few predictable plot arcs (e.g., how long before his self-destructive behaviour threatens his job, his relationships, etc.?) and we do get the expected happy ending (more or less).  And the kids, you know, they get inspired.  I blame director Fred Schepisi who had a string of mainstream hits in the 1980s (Roxanne, Plenty, A Cry in the Dark) but not much of note since.  There may have been something promising here at the start, and some little moments do work, but the whole enterprise ends up rather embarrassingly middlebrow. 

  

Under the Skin (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Under the Skin (2013) – J. Glazer

Unsettling, and even disturbing, this feature from director Jonathan Glazer (known primarily for music videos) uses experimental techniques in the service of sci-fi plot starring Scarlett Johansson as an alien.  For the first hour or so, Johansson drives around in a van stopping blokes in Scotland to ask directions to various places; it turns out that many of these social interactions were filmed with unsuspecting real people with a hidden camera (Johansson wears a black wig).  A few of these blokes, presumably actors, get in the van and are taken to an isolated house where they are submerged in some black liquid fully nude (the source novel apparently tells us that they will later be eaten on the home planet but this is, thankfully, left out of the movie).  In both the scripted and unscripted moments, men seem to be reacting to Johansson with a certain amount of added interest and even lust.  In the beginning, she seems to encourage this – obviously to lure men to their doom.  But later, as she starts to identify more with the human form that her alien has adopted in order to go undercover on Earth, she shrinks away from this sexual interest, seeking solitude in the lonely Scottish Highlands (perhaps – as we don’t really know her motives since she ceases to speak).  Even there, she is subjected to sexual violence (a warning to viewers).  I’m not sure what things were like on her home planet, but down here on Earth, this alien sadly discovered what male attitudes and behaviour toward women can be like – horrible – and I’m sure Scarlett Johansson knows this only too well (so is it ironic that this is the film where she agreed to have a full frontal nude scene?). As a cinematic experience, Under the Skin holds up, particularly in its willingness to go into bizarre David Lynch territory with its odd visual experiments. But the plot itself is thin and slowly disappears as the move progresses – ordinary viewers might lose interest.

Prisoners (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Prisoners (2013) – D. Villeneuve

Relentlessly malevolent (and probably not the picture to watch if you are the parent of small ones), this thriller nevertheless shows director Denis Villeneuve’s talent at building and sustaining tension while abiding by the audience’s expectations. Two families see their youngest members abducted on Thanksgiving and Jake Gyllenhaal is the police detective assigned to find the abductor and get them back.  I haven’t seen Taken or its sequels, so I’m not sure how this fits into the apparent genre – but parent Hugh Jackman decides to take the investigation into his own hands and his fury means that he isn’t subtle.  I don’t think we are meant to identify with Jackman, because everything he does seems to alienate the viewer (and threaten his relationships with everyone else, including his wife, Maria Bello, and the other couple, Viola Davis and Terrence Howard).  As the hunt for the abductor continues, the clues pile up, suspects are tracked down, creepiness abounds (and tends to dominate over the sadness and disgust that would otherwise be the main feeling, since we are dealing with child abduction and possible paedophilia here).  You might catch a bit of a Silence of the Lambs vibe, I suppose.  Gyllenhaal is dogged in his pursuit of all leads, although the police action is pretty genre-consistent at best. In the end, things do get tied up with a bow, but I’ve read that an even darker ending was proposed – that probably would have made for a better film.

The World’s End (2013)

☆ ☆ ½

The World’s End (2013) – E. Wright

I guess there are diminishing returns from these Simon Pegg/Nick Frost comedies directed by Edgar Wright.  By this, the third movie (after Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz), the formula seems evident – take a genre, throw in some action, some broad British comedy (though not too dry), and race through things, not forgetting to have a few touching human moments (about friendship).  OK, I can’t quite recall the earlier movies that well but The World’s End feels a bit thin.  The plot sees Pegg’s loser-who-hasn’t-grown-up character getting his old friends (who have) together to do an epic pub crawl that they didn’t quite complete back in 1990 when they graduated from high school.  However, their old town seems to have been taken over by the Body Snatchers who become increasingly menacing.  Cue the action.  I’m not saying that there aren’t some good witticisms here or that a lot of thought hasn’t gone into the script/set design/casting, it’s just that it all left me a bit flat.  Your average action comedy really is a kind of unchallenging junk food these days -- and I accept that sometimes that’s what you want – but it isn’t sustaining.

Enemy (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆

Enemy (2013) – D. Villeneuve

History professor Jake Gyllenhaal sees a local film where an extra bears a strikingly similar (OK, identical) resemblance to him and decides to find that man (played by Jake Gyllenhaal).   I’m tempted to call this The Two Jakes…but I won’t; instead, they are Adam and his double, Anthony.  Although Adam is somewhat insecure and detached, Anthony is more assertive and aggressive.  Once they make contact, Adam is threatened and begins to fall apart.  Still, when Anthony attempts to steal his girlfriend, Adam finds himself drawn to Anthony’s pregnant wife.  Gyllenhaal does a solid job playing the two characters so they are distinguished only subtly rather than broadly.  The director, Denis Villeneuve, who made the topical thriller Incendies (2010), seems here to be deliberately trying to create a sense of foreboding and confusion (and the movie’s color scheme – yellow -- and Orwellian buildings of Toronto bear this out).  I’m not sure I was able to fully identify with the horror felt by Adam at finding his double nor “catch on” that he perceives Anthony to be his Jungian shadow (a reflection of his darker unconscious and sexual impulses, which seems plausible in retrospect).  And then, giant spiders.

Palo Alto (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Palo Alto (2013) – G. Coppola

It is probably trite for me to call this a cross between “Kids” and “Valley Girl” but somehow that’s what kept coming to mind (particularly after I stumbled across the latter film on cable TV in the US last year and was rather dumbstruck by it).  Of course, recalling Altman’s “The Player”, maybe this really could have been “the pitch” that got the film sold/made.  Or more realistically it was James Franco’s doing, because the script is drawn from some of his short stories (somehow I shudder to think of them), he plays a bit part (as a soccer coach on the make for his high school girl players), and he also served as executive producer.  Director Gia Coppola is, yes, Francis’s grand-daughter but much like her aunt Sofia, she does seem to have inherited some talent (or at least learned from the family traditions).  The film follows a handful of teens as they fill up their bored lives with parties and emotional problems -- so much so that I worried about their self-esteem for most of the movie.  Much of their feelings remain implied rather than shown, however. And the languorousness of things (including the stylish cinematography) is only occasionally punctuated by abrupt reckless behaviour, creating a sort of tension that, instead of leading to some sort of screenwriting arc, ultimately dissipated leaving me, the viewer, to wonder what the point of this all was. 

The Grandmaster (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Grandmaster (2013) -- K.-W. Wong

Wong Kar Wai’s movies typically emphasise style and mood over substance and The Grandmaster is no exception.  Although I usually steer away from kung fu movies featuring stunts on wires and digital manipulation of the image, this film, where each frame seems a fully composed painting of its own, made the artificiality somehow acceptable.  I can see how using modern techniques can also lend themselves to a beautiful work of art.  However, the story, which follows Ip Man (Tony Leung) who eventually became Bruce Lee’s master from the 1930s until the 1960s, is disjointed at best.  Equal time is granted to Zhang Ziyi playing Gong Er, his rival and possible love interest – but the tension surrounding their unfulfilled romance seems unnecessarily muted. True, I seem to have wound up with a heavily edited version of the film and this may be part of the problem – but even so, the narrative loses focus in favour of dreamy slow motion shots or dazzlingly stylish fight scenes.  It is easy to forget the significance of the actions at hand.  Nevertheless, it is clear that Wong is an absolute grandmaster himself at the technical wizardry required to create a film – if only he could also keep control of pacing and narrative at the same time.

Charlie’s Country (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆

Charlie’s Country (2013) – R. de Heer

David Gulpilil (Walkabout, The Last Wave) is charismatic as an elderly Aboriginal man in a remote community in the Northern Territory doing it pretty tough by modern standards.  You see, his culture has been pretty well eradicated by the incursion of white European culture, leaving him with few options but junk food, alcohol & drugs, and laws preventing him from hunting on his own.  When he decides to escape back to the bush to live by the old ways, he finds he is too old and sick to make a go of it.  After a stint in a hospital in Darwin, he joins up with a city-dwelling group of Indigenous people from another tribe and ends up in prison.  Only returning to his country and getting in touch with his traditions (dance, in particular) can bring Charlie peace.  Rolf de Heer’s film takes us to a place not often seen depicting situations as current as today’s headlines (Tony Abbott’s government is cruelly trying to close some remote indigenous communities).  However, it often feels didactic, scoring undoubtedly important points at the expense of a more naturalistic feel. Gulpilil (who co-wrote the script) is a star.

The East (2013)

☆ ☆ ½

The East (2013) – Z. Batmanglij

Brit Marling (who also co-wrote the film) stars as an agent for a private intelligence firm that sends her undercover to infiltrate an anarchist group (“the East”) that is attacking corporations that have poisoned and polluted the environment.  Of course, she begins to feel a part of this group of warm and lovable rebels who really want the right things (but who are using the wrong methods).  Things unfold pretty gradually but with a slick thriller framework that means that deeper character development and the more serious implications of the issues at hand are foregone in lieu of pulse-quickening music and tense action scenes and some romance for good measure.  But even in the film’s quieter moments, you get the feeling that you’ve been here before (even if the surface details – a private spy agency? -- are rather new).  Nevertheless, a strong female lead in a thriller is always welcome; it’s just too bad that the script can’t quite rise above its schematic set up.  Perhaps too it is deeply ambivalent about whether evil corporations should be fought by any means necessary or not. The moral complexity of these issues deserves a more contemplative treatment than the Hollywood thriller format can offer.

Snowpiercer (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Snowpiercer (2013) – J.-H. Bong

As usual, the dystopian future looks pretty grim (and John Hurt is there, fitting right in, appropriately named Gilliam).  In its infinite wisdom, humankind has released a chemical into the stratosphere to cool the planet and stop global warming – this freezes the Earth and causes all life to die except those who manage to escape on an insulated supertrain circling the globe. Director Joon-Ho Bong, in his first Hollywood feature, takes this high concept and brings it to life (although there is truly a lot of death). A grubby pitched battle in a crowded boxcar eventually takes on greater grandeur as a sociological look at the class struggle (with the 1% enjoying obscene privileges again, embodied by Tilda Swinton as a Thatcheresque grotesque).  Ed Harris, the engineer, gets to deliver a sermon about evolutionary theory and ensuring that the ecosystem is balanced before Bong and his Korean team blow everything up.  A bit too cramped in this train for me, as Bong favors action over thought, but this might be the key to a successful commercial career.

Locke (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆

Locke (2013) – S. Knight

Want to be stuck in a car for 80 minutes with someone whose life is unravelling? Tom Hardy is driving from somewhere near Birmingham to London for a momentous reason, as part of his plan to be responsible even for his mistakes.  He seems pretty over-controlled for the most part, managing a complex concrete pour for the largest site in Europe (outside of nuclear or military) over the phone, while also dealing with various family members and other callers who reveal the predicament he is in.  Good thing he has Bluetooth hands-free action in his BMW.  This movie sets itself the challenge of making a movie that takes place entirely inside a car that won’t bore people.  It is more or less a single monologue (albeit with people phoning in) – which was Tom Hardy’s personal challenge, I guess.  It takes place at night which means that tiny colored bits of light in geometric shapes cover the screen, reflecting off the windscreen, superimposed on Hardy’s face and everywhere else.  This makes the movie seem experimental.  However, this is one of those movies that is also blue and orange tinted – perhaps every Hollywood movie now is (read this: http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange-and-blue/)  – this distracted me and I’m downgrading the cinematography as a penalty.  And in the end, I don’t think I really wanted to be stuck in the car with this poor sod and his rather mundane self-made problems.