Marshland (2014)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Marshland (2014) – A. Rodríguez

Spanish take on the serial killer genre with two cops, one young and idealistic and one older and cynical, hunting a killer of young girls in the rural south of the country. The time is 1980 and Franco has been dead for five years but his loyalists remain in this area. The younger cop has been relocated from Madrid for writing an outspoken pro-democracy letter to the newspaper. The older cop is rumored to have been part of Franco’s secret police. Together they must track down the killer of two teen sisters who may have been the subject of pornographic photographs. So, the content is dark and the film moves slowly, taking its time to linger on the landscape (wasteland or marshland). The clues add up, as do the victims (some from the past).  Those in positions of power may be implicated.  As the plot takes several twists and turns, we learn more about the two detectives and perhaps they come to understand or accept each other. But by the time we get to the end of the picture, a few plot holes still exist (or perhaps I missed some important details or did not quite grasp the cultural context). And, not unlike some classics of the neo-noir genre (e.g., Chinatown), even as the mystery appears solved, justice remains somewhere in the distance.

 

Pasolini (2014)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Pasolini (2014) – A. Ferrara

Willem Dafoe plays Pier Paolo Pasolini, the famous Italian writer-director, a gay Marxist who courted scandal and was murdered in the early 1970s. Abel Ferrara’s film shows the last day or so in his life. By no means a standard biopic, but instead a series of scenes/episodes that may or may not shed light on Pasolini’s character. The main theme that comes through is about the need to create and to stay true to one’s vision. Ferrara and Pasolini, as directors, shared a certain fearlessness, a willingness to put things on screen that might cross the line or enrage the censors. Ferrara’s best known film might be Bad Lieutenant, where Harvey Keitel shows us why his titular characters is so bad.  Pasolini had a more successful and varied career but his final film, Salo, probably created the most scandal (I haven’t seen it but there are clips in this film). He also created films based on literary works, such as the Gospels, the Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights, etc. after an early career releasing some provocative character studies.  Ferrara includes some pornographic scenes in the current film for good measure. Dafoe loses himself in the character and benefits from Ferrara’s moody style. No judgments are made about Pasolini’s lifestyle – although you get the sense that his late night trysts with gay hustlers are an escape from the stresses of his day job, a tragic escape, as it turns out.   

John Wick (2014)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

John Wick (2014) – C. Stahelski

This film has spawned a couple of sequels so I thought I would check to see what the fuss was about (seven years later). First of all, it seems to have helped to foment a resurgence in the career of Keanu Reeves (surname probably not necessary) – and he certainly struts his stuff as a true action hero, suggesting his Matrix moves were no put on. Second, this is ultra-violent stuff, perhaps in the mould of John Woo’s Hard-Boiled (1992)– yes, that kind of balletic violence – but Keanu’s Wick is a less charitable killer than Chow Yun-Fat’s Tequila. Wick is a hit-man after all, coming out of retirement to exact his revenge on the Russian mafia tsar, son, and minions who have stolen his car and killed his dog. Expect execution-styled violence, not for the squeamish. Third, the film is stylishly directed, like a videogame, and has some humorous moments, based on the fact that Keanu is an unstoppable killing machine (one-man army).  So, it’s designed to be a total adrenalin rush but somehow I can’t divorce the feeling that I am watching people get killed (even if they are bad amoral people or, in fact, fictional non-entities) and this results in an ambivalent response. Could this sort of film be bad for society?

 

The New Girlfriend (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The New Girlfriend (2014) – F. Ozon

For some reason, I have been completely neglecting François Ozon after enjoying Under the Sand (2000) and Swimming Pool (2002), as much as I can recall them.  He seems to have continued making films in a similar psychological vein and with some critical acclaim.  But I guess I was somehow fooled by the online descriptions of this one (and don’t read on if you’d like to be fooled too). It seemed like a thriller about a man who harboured a secret that was discovered after his wife died.  I mistakenly assumed that the secret was a “new girlfriend” – however, I couldn’t be further off-base.  Instead, the film is largely told from the perspective of Claire (Anaïs Demoustier), the best friend of the deceased wife, and it is her “new girlfriend” that the film is about.  And indeed that “new girlfriend” is the husband with a secret, David (Romain Duris) – and the secret is cross-dressing. As Claire and David (now called Virginia) grow closer, their relationship (kept secret from Claire’s husband) has serious psychological effects on both members (and Ozon seems to suggest these are positive freeing effects).  Clearly, Claire is seeking a replacement for her lost girlfriend (for whom she may or may not have had sexual feelings) whereas Virginia wants to be appreciated as a woman and to have a close girlfriend.  Or perhaps there is more to it?  Although the film feels like a Claude Chabrol French psychodrama at times, particularly as it gets into Claire’s confused head, ultimately it seems to have less to say and less tension than expected, save for a late plot surprise and a brief somewhat ambiguous coda.  Yet, we don’t get too many films that venture into this territory, unjudgmentally but with intrigue. Perhaps Ozon’s oeuvre is worth a look-see, after all.

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

What We Do in the Shadows (2014) – J. Clement & T. Waititi

Ha, ha – the Kiwi sense of humour is droll but ridiculous.  Think about “Flight of the Conchords” – hilarious, right?  But what’s the formula?  Silly, but intelligent.  Rarely crass (which seems to be the flavour of much American humour).  Willing to poke fun at themselves.  Perhaps whimsical at times.  Now take all that and apply it to the situation of three vampires living as flatmates in Wellington; that is, think about the problems that all flatmates face and then make them vampires.  Then pretend there is a documentary team following them around as they engage in their usual routines (which include nightclubbing and hunting for victims).  NZ superstars Taika Waititi (director of Boy, 2010, and Thor: Ragnarok, 2018) and Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords), co-directed and co-star alongside Jonny Brugh and a few other familiar Kiwis (Rhys Darby appears as a werewolf).  You probably need to be in the right mood for this but I enjoyed it and laughed (there are some great bits).  Of course, even at just 86 minutes, you start to feel the material get stretched out – the concept can only be pushed so far, perhaps.  That said, I understand that the movie has spun off a TV series already. Worth a look!

Cold in July (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆

Cold in July (2014) – J. Mickle

I saw this on a list of recent “neo-noirs” and checked it out, despite the DVD box looking (and advertising) like a 90s Tarantino rip-off.  So, I went in cold, as it were, barely knowing who Michael C. Hall is (wondering half the time whether he had once been in The Breakfast Club).  He plays a not particularly bright picture framer who kills a prowler in self-defence and then has to deal with the prowler’s just-out-of-jail father (played menacingly by Sam Shepard).  A good deal of tension is created just out of this situation, as Shepard stalks Hall and his family.  But soon the police move in and the threat is removed…until Hall realises that all is not as it seems.  Soon, he’s partnering with Shepard and private eye/pig farmer Don Johnson to take the law into their own hands.  Things get very dark, so much so that I would say that the film crosses the line into tawdry (sordid and unpleasant) and risks invoking some bad shit without enough heft to the plot to justify it.  That is, the subsequent pay-off to the film and the exploration of the characters just seems to go flat at the end with no attempt to investigate their psychology or a more literary theme about fathers and sons that falls away just out of reach.  It isn’t a complete write-off: the tension remains high throughout and the inevitable ultra-violence is well-staged (for that sort of thing) plus the film takes place in the ‘80s with period detail to match (I gave a little shudder).  But my recommendation is to give this a miss.   

  

The Look of Silence (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Look of Silence (2014) – J. Oppenheimer

This is a documentary in which an Indonesian man of my generation confronts the now-elderly members of the previous generation who were responsible for the Communist purges of 1965 where one million died (the focus of Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously, 1982).  It is telling that Errol Morris and Werner Herzog were listed as executive producers – alongside a large number of crew members who chose to be “anonymous” in the credits (another telling fact about politics in Indonesia).  Morris and Herzog are famous for their revealing documentaries and Joshua Oppenheimer has taken a leaf from their books to show us the unflinching and brave confrontations that Adi undertook– and the defensive responses he received.  The title refers to Adi’s intense reaction to the killers’ answers to his questions about what they did and whether they feel regret, guilt, or moral responsibility – he just stares silently, which allows the men time to reflect…and squirm.  It seems incredible that the leaders of the death squad allowed these interactions to be filmed – but many had previously appeared in Oppenheimer’s companion film, The Act of Killing (2012), in which they were encouraged to act out the atrocities that they committed for the camera in Hollywood genre styles – I haven’t seen it but presumably the footage that Adi watches in the current film comes from the earlier film or its outtakes.  What we do see here is heartbreaking enough; none of the men show any remorse.  Oppenheimer surrounds the interviews with footage of Adi and his aged parents and young daughter, all of whom must now fear for their safety due to possible reprisals from those who are still in power (or the relatives of those still in power) in Indonesia today.  Although the film focuses on Aceh province in North Sumatra, the genocide and its impact occurred across the country; when I lived in East Java briefly in 1991-1992, the gentle people I knew were cautious to never say anything negative about their government (and were surprised that I could voice my views about George H. W. Bush so publicly).  As a documentary, The Look of Silence is incredibly important for what it reveals and its contribution to the Indonesian healing process (apparently it is shown and discussed over there) but the cumulative effect of the many interviews on the viewer is brutal.  The only (mortifying) conclusion one can draw is that human nature makes the underlying events a perennial possibility.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014) – R. Andersson

Great title.  Perhaps if this were the first Roy Andersson film that I watched, I would have been more exhilarated by it, but since it is the third (and stated to be last) film in a trilogy about being human, a bit of the novelty has worn off.  That’s not to say that the Andersson style isn’t still something wondrous to behold.  He meticulously sets up each shot with actors positioned statically around the frame with all elements of the setting perfectly colour-coded (in this case, heavy with beiges, greys, pastel greens, and browns) and the depth of field shot such that everything looks flat and characters in the background are fully in focus.  With everything static, very tiny movements (or splotches of colour) capture the eye and focus the mind – this gives an existential or humanistic flavour to the proceedings, asking us to consider the relevance/importance/uniqueness of the action in focus.  There are some really great set-pieces.  And, as in the earlier films, Songs from the Second Floor (2000) and You, the Living (2007), the film unfolds as a series of disconnected scenes, wry or absurd anecdotes featuring situations that we’ve all experienced or that elicit an emotion that we all know (such as embarrassment, awkwardness, shame).  The tone is dysthymic but affectionately comic – we’re let off the hook for having also been in these predicaments.  There are a handful of recurring characters, principally a pair of novelty salesmen trying to “help people to experience fun” by way of the traditional “laughing bag”, extra-long vampire teeth, and a horrible old man mask.  The joke is that these things never really work to bring fun to anyone’s lives.  Funny joke, right?  You get the point of the film then.  Worth your time, especially if you’ve also seen and enjoyed the earlier films in the trilogy.    

Love is Strange (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆

Love is Strange (2014) – I. Sachs

Although it utilises the same plot device as Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), in which an older couple is forced to sell their home and move to separate lodgings with their not-so-willing relatives, Ira Sachs’s film transports the situation to the modern day and stars John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as the couple, newly married but together for nearly 40 years before the separation.  Sachs doesn’t follow in the earlier film’s tear-jerking footsteps however and instead gently offers a naturalistic slice of life in a contemplative mood (aided by a pleasant piano score and some poetic interludes).  The politics of gay life is manifested a few times: a blissful wedding soon gives way to Molina losing his job as music teacher at a Catholic school for formalizing his already acknowledged relationship, Lithgow makes a quick reference to Stonewall-era protests – but these examples seem unusual in the context of the loving acceptance offered to them by everyone in the picture.  And love is certainly the focus (as it was in 1937) with the loving Lithgow/Molina relationship always centre stage (and beautifully acted), even as their living arrangements create strain on their relationships with others (including niece-in-law Marisa Tomei).  The film isn’t perfect:  a couple of subplots don’t really get started and distract away from the main story and then things end rather abruptly.  Yet, for all its brevity, it was very pleasant to spend some time in New York City with these real people and their open-minded and creative friends and family. There didn’t seem to be anything strange about this at all!

  

The Connection (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Connection (2014) – C. Jimenez

So, this film was a bit like a fast food meal – you’ve had it before, you know what it tastes like, it’s pleasing when it goes down, but then you aren’t really completely satisfied feeling a bit like you shouldn’t have eaten it. A French version of The French Connection or at least a version of the law enforcement challenge of taking down that big heroin ring in the’70s that saw Marseilles serving as the middleman between Turkish poppies and American consumers.  Jean Dujardin is charismatic as the magistrate in charge of the investigation and Gilles Lellouche is suitably unsavoury (but not without some sympathetic notes) as the drug kingpin, but damn if the whole script isn’t full of clichés.  I guess we could just chalk it up to this being a genre pic and leave it at that (the prosecutor that risks all, neglected wife who threatens to leave, the villain who is vaguely noble but not coping well with the heat, the possible rats within the ranks of the cops).  But despite the vaguely stimulating Scorsese-like moves (i.e., with pop music and travelling cameras) things ultimately end up a bit flat and then I’m hungry again. 

  

Pim & Pom: The Big Adventure (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆

Pim & Pom: The Big Adventure (2014) – G. Smid

Aito and Amon and I went to see this Dutch animated kids’ movie at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.  It is based on the drawings of artist Fiep Westendorp (who died in 2004) and the story follows the titular cats who get lost and have to find their way home to “the lady” with whom they live.  They are chased by the lady’s two nieces who want to steal Pim & Pom away for themselves, if they can find them (“why are they so mean?” said Aito, aged 6).  The look of the film is very stylized, all flat 2-D and very colourful – these cats have no mouths.  Of course, it has been redubbed in English and there are songs (of the schmaltzy popular variety about friends and sharing and responsibility).  Amon (aged 3 ½) was more-or-less transfixed, although he wanted to leave when things got a little troubling on-screen.  Aito’s attention seemed to wax and wane but, in the end, he gave it four stars out of five and we watched a few related you-tube clips when we got home.

  

A Most Violent Year (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆

A Most Violent Year (2014) – J. C. Chandor

Grim, somewhat turgid, tale of a heating oil executive contending with a variety of stresses in early ‘80s NYC.  Oscar Isaac is subdued in the lead, perhaps because he plays an extremely controlled guy who is motivated to overcome the obstacles against all odds (which include robbers hijacking his trucks, the district attorney bringing down corruption charges, and a risky business play that starts to go sour).  Jessica Chastain is his crass wife, daughter of the previous company president who ran the company as a gangster rather than in the upstanding way Isaac wishes to pursue, and she is a piece of work (but doesn’t always feel as though she is in the same film with the others).  So, it’s an unusual story – about a business man, his wife, his banker, and his lawyer (played by an unrecognizable Albert Brooks…except for his voice) – that threatened not to hold my interest.  I mean, who cares about business guys? Although there are elements of a thriller embedded in the story, they feel tacked on to the plot in order to stop the anaemia.  The grimy New York locations and sad old cars only add to the effect.

  

Top Five (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆

Top Five (2014) – C. Rock

Chris Rock is an engaging performer and he seems like he must be a nice guy.  I haven’t really been following his career.  This is the third feature film he has directed.  He plays what you would have to assume is a version of himself, a famous comedian trying to branch out into more serious pursuits being interviewed by the New York Times.  There is now a genre of these types of movies that blend reality and fiction, a genre that can be pretty fascinating and funny -- as in Tristam Shandy (2005) with Steve Coogan -- but which can also include horror shows like Jerry Springer’s The Ringmaster (1998).  Rock’s film is somewhere in the middle. Rosario Dawson plays the Times reporter (and potential love interest) and their tete-a-tete ranges all over the place, covering alcoholism/sobriety, film criticism, reality TV vs. reality, and more.  There are some “blue” moments (as in sexually explicit) and there is some raw language (no surprise) – but the general tone is affectionate and sensitive.  The movie mostly succeeds as it ambles amiably along but it feels like we have been here before.   

The Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) – O. Assayas

It’s all talk, largely between Juliette Binoche, an aging actress confronted with age, and Kristen Stewart, as her personal assistant.  The talk can be fascinating (as when the film’s themes tend to break out into the open) or it can be banal (as when the leads deal with contracts, movie offers, and tabloid journalists).  Director Olivier Assayas tried this formula once before in Irma Vep (1996), where Maggie Cheung entered the world of French cinema and we saw the personal relationships in that world from behind the scenes but with an outsider’s viewpoint.  That film is better and takes more exciting risks but The Clouds of Sils Maria also shows Assayas’ planning and control, despite his willingness to dash from here to there often without tying things up with a nice bow.  The relationship between Binoche and Stewart is reflective of (or interwoven with) the script of a play that Binoche has been hired to star in, a play that was her first big break in which she earlier played the younger assertive role against an older vulnerable partner in a lesbian relationship.  Now she must play the older part.  So, we are lost with her in the realms of memory and identity but just as in real life, the film doesn’t really dwell on such things long enough for it to become painful. But the Alps look nice.

’71 (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

’71 (2014) – Y. Demange

A British soldier gets stuck in the Catholic section of Belfast and has to escape or die in this searing and intense action flick.  It is a “confused situation” to be sure, and we are privy not only to the soldier’s experiences but also the backroom conversations of members of the IRA and the Ulster Rifles.  Our soldier (Jack O’Connell) becomes a bloody pawn in the political machinations of the times.  And those times are very nicely recreated with cars, outfits, hairstyles, furniture and wallpaper.  In some ways, what we have here is the inverse of Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out (1947) which saw injured IRA man James Mason passing the night (and from life to death) on the run from the law/Brits also in Northern Ireland.  Similarly, we meet an array of characters and situations as O’Connell moves from location to location in and around the Catholic tenement flats but the focus in ’71 is less on creating a parable and more on gritty pulse-pounding action done well.

Gone Girl (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Gone Girl (2014) – D. Fincher

David Fincher’s film left a bad taste in my mouth (I haven’t read the book nor paid attention to any of the controversy around it).  Ben Affleck may be responsible for the disappearance of his wife (Rosamund Pike).  He arrives home to find the door open, some furniture over-turned, and her gone.  Of course, Affleck becomes the number one suspect (because, really, he is that type of guy).  However, if we are encouraged to consider Affleck’s perspective, even in the face of possible domestic violence, are we also asked to blame the victim? Fincher seems to indulge in the same kind of shenanigans that Mamet once toyed with (in Oleanna; and perhaps Hitchcock too), getting us to identify with the probable or stereotypical guilty party. So, is it a misogynistic film, if it explores the victim’s deservingness even as it raises awareness about family violence?  There is no easy answer but still I say yes.  Aside from any potential value still remaining for film to tell us how bad the media’s three ring circus has become, the film serves only to reinforce some people’s negative beliefs about some women   But then again it is only a film and quite gripping for most of its tawdry length.

Predestination (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆

Predestination (2014) – M. Sperig & P. Sperig

From a short story by Robert A. Heinlein about time travel comes this too-clever-for-its-own-good Australian film starring Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook.  The premise involves the hoary old chestnut of returning to the past in order to change the future, for example, in order to prevent a great tragedy. Along for the ride comes the idea that you could, of course, meet yourself and change your own future.  The Sperig brothers have created a slick good-looking film, set in the US to appeal to that market (with Hawke as the big name), but the story folds in upon itself just a bit too much to remain logical and, even so, it is too easy to see the big twist coming.  That said, it doesn’t really overstay its welcome at only 97 minutes, so it might be worth your “time”.

  

The Infinite Man (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Infinite Man (2014) – H. Sullivan

South Australian feature that has a clever premise – a man invents a way to travel back in time to “fix” an anniversary date that goes wrong.  The twist here is that when he travels back in time, there are then two of him in the past.  Since he does this numerous times and also brings his girlfriend and her ex back with him, things get rather complicated.  Ultimately, it’s cute and gently amusing when it had the potential to be something more.  So, it plays itself out in 85 minutes and that’s enough.  South Australia looks strikingly desolated (and that fits this three-hander). 

  

A Most Wanted Man (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Most Wanted Man (2014) – A. Corbijn

Before I found out that this was the filming of a John Le Carré novel, I thought to myself that Philip Seymour Hoffman seemed (at times) to be channelling Richard Burton from in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. However, director Anton Corbijn makes drab seem almost too cool with his photographer’s eye and color coding schemes that might be a bit too ostentatious.  Le Carré’s plot successfully brings together a few different strands linking asylum seekers, terrorism, the money trail, the CIA, and a couple of German police or spy agencies in Hamburg and echoes the earlier films of his Cold War work more so than any more recent depictions of Islamist terrorism and the Western response.  In order to interact with the actual German cast (speaking English), the Hollywood actors here try on some German accents, to various degrees of success.  Hoffman, in his final film, inhabits the central spy impressively, though you can’t quite forget it’s him.  A bit too pat to be fully satisfying but still enjoyable.

The Babadook (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Babadook (2014) – J. Kent

As with every horror movie focused on haunted houses or evil spirit possession, the Babadook has a really slow build before anything really scary (or obvious) happens.  This allows bubbling psychological undercurrents to make their appearance and spell out things we need to know about the characters and their relationships.  In this case, we meet a single mother and her six year old son who are still dealing with the repercussions of the husband/father’s death in a car accident.  So, these people are fragile and therefore we are not quite sure, when the Babadook introduces himself, whether he is a figment of their imaginations or somehow something horribly real.  So, the movie confronts mental illness head on.  It is therefore rather grim and a bit of an ordeal to watch.  The special effects are handled subtly and with restraint – which is good.  The acting, however, does suffer from some changes in tone that may or may not be due to spirit possession.  About half way through the film, I realized it was Australian – so it is not ostentatiously so (I guess I’m too used to accents here).  I won’t spoil the conclusion other than to say that I was somewhat perplexed.  If this sounds like your thing, then it might be better than some others in the genre.