A Matriarchal Underdog
January 10, 2016
Joy (2016).
D/W: David O. Russell. DP: Linus Sandgren. Starring: Jennifer Lawrence/Robert De Niro/Bradley Cooper/Édgar Ramirez/Virginia Madsen/Diane Ladd/Isabella Rossellini/Elisabeth Rohm/Dascha Polanco.
January is one of the best months for movies as there is a mad rush towards award season despite the pretense that filmmakers do not care about awards. A fun and debatable topic, this January has seen the release of Joy, a new film for Jennifer Lawrence. One that is not based on a YA novel or a comic book, a relief frankly.
This is the third collaboration for director David O. Russel with actors Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. The stellar Silver Linings Playbook won Lawrence her Oscar and the group reunited for 2013’s American Hustle. It is easy to understand repeat collaborations due to success, comfort, and creativity, but for me this has been fizzling out for awhile. Silver Linings Playbook was able to hold its audience until the end, drawing out its romance and drama in a way that felt fresh. American Hustle looked great and started off strong, but fell apart and left you feeling a bit bamboozled. Joy is a similar experience.
Starting off strong the film is narrated and structured by Diane Ladd who plays Joy’s (Lawrence) live in grandmother. As she reflects on the life of her seemingly favorite grandchild we get flashbacks of a character seen through the eyes of a loved one. Spunky and inventive young Joy is encouraged to make things, but her parents divorce spirals her to drop her dreams, fall in love, have kids, and eventually get divorced. Now the family breadwinner she struggles to return to her former inventive self. Using her daughters crayons one day she invents a self ringing mop that would become the now famed Miracle Mop.
Loosely inspired on the life of Joy Mangano, O. Russell reworked writer Annie Mumolo (who co-wrote Bridesmaids) original script so as to stray away from a straight biopic. Rather, Joy is a combination of women and Lawrence was free to create instead of imitate. Lawrence is full throttle here as she bears her burdens and stands up for herself. She’s not bad and her relate-ability works here, but there is a bit too much glamorizing for my tastes. She’s best in smaller moments of triumph like getting through a televised demonstration of her mop on the Home Shopping Channel than sauntering down the street in a pair of shades. Also please no more “She cuts her hair off in the bathroom herself then wins the day” scenes. Please!
Lawrence is surrounded by talent with De Niro getting some truly awfully patronizing lines that he manages to deliver convincingly. Édgar Ramirez is also great as her ex-husband/lounge singer Tony. The winner is surely Virginia Madsen as Joy’s anxiety stridden mother who never leaves her bedroom and watches soap operas all day. The importance of this fictional world and its visual conceit is never followed through. An fascinating echo of trapped pain and lost ambitions in generations of women. This is frustrating as most of Russell’s visual decisions disappear by the final act. Here he is working again with cinematographer Linus Sandgren who shot American Hustle, bearing its same faults in a way.
Ultimately, Joy is pleasing and infectious because it is essentially an underdog story. In a time of the active use of the word ‘feminism’ it is easy to route for a young girl who says when she creates that her gift is that she doesn’t “need a prince.” By the time her father says to her it’s his fault because he made her believe she could do anything you will want to punch something. Joy leaves you swinging your arms in triumph, but wondering if it couldn’t have been better.
Star Treatment
December 1, 2015
Since its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival the Hank Williams biopic, I Saw The Light, has not been talked about. Pushed from its original award season release, Sony Pictures Classic has finally given us a trailer. Starring Englishman (AKA Loki) Tom Hiddleston as arguably the grandfather of country music as it is known today, the film looks the typical musical biopic of a talent with demons. I’ve been waiting for this one, but it looks like all the rest. However, we could be surprised as with an R rating who knows?
I Saw The Light
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiiuMiLfl_4
One Man Compass
November 19, 2015
Steve Jobs (2015).
D: Danny Boyle. DP: Alwin H. Küchler. W: Aaron Sorkin. Starring: Michael Fassbender/Kate Winslet/Seth Rogen/Jeff Daniels/Michael Stuhlbarg/Katherine Waterston/Sarah Snook/John Oritz. (NOTE: Based on Walter Isaacson’s book ‘Steve Jobs’)
Forgive me for never making time for the Ashton Kutcher staring 2013 film, Jobs. Now with this newer, fancier, somewhat biopic film, Steve Jobs, I am curious about how bad the other might be. Or if they manage a different side of this character study entirely. I shall make a date with netflix to discover.
Cut into three different chapters based around different product launches in 1984, 1988, and 1998 Aaron Sorkin’s script is precise. Sorkin is the famed creator of the TV series The West Wing as well as an Oscar winner for his screenplay of The Social Network. The Sorkin pace and quick dialogue is on the nose tonally with this characterization of the non-emotional asshole and eventual CEO of Apple. Everything we learn is in the dialogue despite this film being about the selling of home computing and Jobs’ own obsession with the look of his products.
Michael Fassbender whose slimmed down considerably since Macbeth is fraught and scheming here, but cannot abandon his looks for the character entirely. His Jobs is a bit Howard Hughes for me. The main emotional arc of the story is centered on his relationship with his daughter Lisa whom he vehemently denies is not his for most of the film. This strained relationship is the backboard for Sorkin to explore Jobs’ history, which is dolled out, as I said, only in dialogue. A refreshing device, leaning the film away from biopic tendencies, but nevertheless does not provide clarity to anything.
One of the weirdest aspects of the film is Kate Winslet. She gives a good performance as Joanna Hoffman, being the emotional compass for Jobs’ stunted antics. However, after the first chapter of the film she suddenly acquires an Eastern European accent. It is frankly jarring and nothing in the film can really explain it. I spent the majority of the 1988 section confused and pitching myself as if I must have been asleep before to have missed this accent. Trust me, I was not. Seth Rogen and Michael Stuhlbarg give solid supporting performances and are great screen partners for Fassbender.
Ultimately, director Danny Boyle is not able to entrance you. Steve Jobs runs too long especially as it is the same crop of characters who just reemerge at different launches. We see very little of the creative process behind any of the products so there is little satisfaction in what reveal we do see. As Jobs hardly changes throughout the film Boyle’s focus of the camera on his face merely acts to remind us that this character is not on a journey, even if he has softer moments. The discussion of the closed versus open systems of the computers is probably the most fascinating technical element explained, why apple products are they way they are. But this is lost in a film obsessed with one man’s compass and not the ship’s voyage.
Too Big for its Britches
October 23, 2015
The Program (2015).
D: Stephen Frears. DP: Danny Cohen. W: John Hodge (Based on David Walsh’s book Seven Deadly Sins and My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong) Starring: Ben Foster/Chris O’Dowd/Jesse Plemmons/Dustin Hoffman/Guillaume Canet/Lee Pace/Elaine Cassidy/Laura Donnelly.
Oh the biopic. As I mentioned in my review of Straight Outta Compton the biopic has a tempestuous history that was birthed during the Hollywood studio era. Now biopics must justify their negotiation between truth and fiction as they endeavor to weave a cinematic narrative from a life or sequence of events or a chapter biopic (like the recent Life). The Program thankfully does not attempt to tackle the life of disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong, but rather his specific time racing in the Tour de France and his high profile career destruction.
The Program is in part based on the book by UK sports journalist David Walsh, played here by Chris O’Dowd, on his pursuit of Armstrong whose first win had him suspicious. The lawsuits against Armstrong by both his former cycling team members and sponsors also contributed to the script. The film’s focus on this specific period of his life from young racer to cancer victim to spokesman to winner to disgrace create a nice flow for the film and help it along in a story a majority of the audiences already know does not end well. You can feel screenwriter David Hodges (Trainspotting, The Beach) actively trying not to fall into biopic traps, he only does a little backstory on Floyd Landis (Jesse Plemmons). Yet there is a dynamic that is just lacking here, but I believe that’s the failure of the source material. We all know he was a cheat, so the film cannot build up any reveal, there isn’t any climax.
Director Stephen Frears whose long career has a lot of success has become a sort of hit and miss. Philomena was subtle and heartbreaking and done with a tender hand. This tender hand is misplaced here. The fusion of documentary footage or real coverage of Armstrong and the events doesn’t elevate the film, but rather makes me want to watch a documentary or read Walsh’s book more. There are beautiful shots of a cycling Armstrong, played by Ben Foster, one man against a vast trek. The story is just too big for the film, yet too concise as well.
The saving grace maybe Ben Foster as Armstrong. A sleeper actor for most I have been watching him since he first turned up on the Disney Channel at age fifteen in the series Flash Forward. He has done a tremendous amount of work including a brilliant turn in the remake of 3:10 to Yuma and held his own in Lone Survivor. He clearly committed his body to the part, even reportedly doping himself to understand performance enhancing drugs. Regardless of method what he nails is Armstrong’s charm, manipulation, and fierce will to lie to win. Who Armstrong is remains nebulous. O’Dowd is a good adversary and it’s nice to see him step out of comedy. Plemmons, from Friday Night Lights fame, does well, but is overshadowed by Foster as Armstrong. It must have the case in real life.
The Program at times feels like a made-for-television movie. That is not necessarily a bad thing, as there is fine work done there. But the disgraced athlete or the tragically lost one are biopic genres that for me feel like ones to be played at home. They are stories for the living room not the big stage. We all know how they end, which earns us the right to press pause and use the bathroom.
Rebel Hearts
October 19, 2015
Suffragette (2015).
D: Sarah Gavron. DP: Eduard Grau. W: Abi Morgan. Starring: Carey Mulligan/Helena Bonham-Carter/Anne-Marie Duff/Meryl Streep/Ben Wishaw/Brendan Gleeson/Romola Garai/Natalie Press/Adam Michael Dodd.
As award season looms the first of many strong contenders hits theaters. Suffragette bowed at the London Film Festival and enticed domestic violence protesters to lay down on the red carpet and call for greater funding. The cast donning shirts with ‘I’d rather be a rebel, than a slave’ caused outrage back in the US. But here in the UK, as the quote is part of Emmeline Pankhurst famous speech to the British suffragettes, the promotion went unfazed. Perhaps context these days is even more important than ever.
Suffragette follows Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) whose dingy East London life in a launderette has little solace but parenting her young son George. Maud is so down she doesn’t even get an ‘e’ in her name, deprived from her very birth. As her fellow laundress Violet (Anne-Marie Duff) recruits her to join the movement Maud’s home and work lives are threatened as she takes on the cause of women’s right to vote and equal pay. She eventually joins action master Edith (Helena Bonham-Carter) who takes Pankhurst’s (played in one sequence by Meryl Streep) call to rebellion seriously.
Screenwriter Abi Morgan, who wrote the fabulous BBC series, The Hour, along with The Iron Lady and Shame, keeps a tight pace in her work. The film clips along not leaving time to over sentimentalize too much. Domestic violence and work injuries are part of the landscape here, Maud’s upper arms covered with burns never explained or referenced to. This subtle hand from director Sarah Gavron helps Mulligan carry the film with tenderness and restraint. Mulligan’s Maud is fragile, but her clear eyes let the practicality of her world shine through. A nice turn especially when help up to last years Far From the Madding Crowd.
Mulligan is surrounded by the best with Streep swooping in much like Judi Dench did in Shakespeare in Love. Bonham-Carter provides the group determination that helps balance a nice performance by Duff as beaten and baby tired Violet. Natalie Press is no newcomer, but her part here is pivotal. You should see Andrea Arnold’s Oscar winning short Wasp to see what she’s capable of. The men are few here, but Ben Wishaw and Brendan Gleeson provide a cadence of reactions needed against Maud’s cause.
Suffragette is in the middle of a current heated debate about the white washing of feminism in cinema. The lack of any non-white representation in the film is clearly apparent, but yet can every film represent everything or everyone? I am not defending the film’s choices, but nevertheless Suffragette ultimately takes on Maud’s story as someone so close to Emily Wilding Davidson. Surely there were class and racial distinctions within the suffragette movement, but what is to be celebrated is the message. In this scenario I do not think there is a right choice that would appease everyone. Nonetheless the discussion is a fruitful one, no one was talking about this ten years ago. Let’s hope the film’s success is a call to arms.
A Celluloid Story
September 30, 2015
Life (2015).
D: Anton Corbijn. DP: Charlotte Bruus Christensen. W: Luke Davis. Starring: Dane DeHaan/Robert Pattinson/Ben Kinsgley/Joel Edgerton/Kristian Bruun/Alessandra Mastronardi.
As the leaves begin to change, fall is upon us and once again its time to get through the slog of films and gear up for another award season. Life has made it over here in the UK before its December release in the US, but this will hardly help its appeal back home.
Similar to recent films My Week With Marilyn or Hitchcock, Life is what I would term a chapter biopic. Rather than attempting to chronicle a subject from birth to death, the chapter biopic picks a specific moment in time. More importantly, the chapter biopic routinely involves an outsider’s interactions with the biopic subject. In a sense the film is as much about who this subject was to the lay person, their sparkle briefly entering someone else’s orbit.
Life follows freelance photographer Dennis Stock (Robert Pattinson) who feels trapped in LA shooting red carpets and movie stills. He meets a pre-Rebel Without a Cause James Dean (Dane DeHaan) and the two begin a weird love/hate friendship. Dennis is persistent about shooting a spread for Life magazine of Dean who continuously evades the idea only to give into Stock once they’ve returned to New York City. Of course, this all leads to the creation of the famous Life spread of Dean back home in Indiana, his last visit before his death at twenty-four.
The majority of audiences will know the spread or of Dean’s death leaving little surprises to be had here. So the film must rely entirely on its leads chemistry and their performances. Pattinson continues to look uncomfortable on screen, pulling his jaw and posing like his Twilight days. His performance is inconsistent, he hardly seems to want to make eye contact with his fellow actors. DeHaan, who is one of my favorite young actors, plays Dean like the weird maverick he was. He cannot hide behind a wide smile and looks like James Franco so rather his Dean is a Marlon Brando sounding slightly brawny poet. DeHaan does a good job building a character and considering Dean’s death was sixty years ago and he only made three films the impression of who he is really the only surviving element. His image as iconography has eclipsed his talent or memory.
Ultimately, Life cannot sustain interest in its subject as it relies on shadows of an actor long gone, shadows that are better represented in the famous photographs than in cinema. The film is not able to create any real buildup to Indiana and stalls out multiple times. The personal signification of the photographs falls flat as it is left to a end card. Anton Corbijn’s previous film, Control, is far superior in composition, energy, and performance. There simply is not enough here for Life to sink its teeth into.
This Is a Game and It’s Ruthless
September 15, 2015
Straight Outta Compton (2015).
D: F. Gary Gray. DP: Matthew Libatique. W: Jonathan Herman & Andrea Berloff. Starring: O’Shea Jackson Jr./Corey Hawkins/Jason Mitchell/Neil Brown Jr./Aldis Hodge/R. Marcus Taylor/Paul Giamatti/Tate Ellington.
Already the highest grossing R rated opening for the month of August in the US, Straight Outta Compton has put the biopic back on the map in a big way. A collective process with the help of former N.W.A. members, the film follows a group of friends from Compton as they rap their way to the top, and spawn careers outside of their street stories.
Straight Outta Compton joins a long lineage of musical biopic projects that were developed with the involvement of their original subjects. This theoretically brings a level of authenticity and oftentimes transparency to a film, but can also allow certain events or people to be omitted or glossed over. Routinely when you look through interviews, biopic subjects want the ‘truth’ of their story to come through – something to be clarified, and have certain emphasis in mind. The disgruntled biopic subject oftentimes results when life rights are disputed or music catalogs not released, a legal battle at the heart of this entire genre. Therefore, in this case, although Dr. Dre and Ice Cube produced this film, there can never be a complete truth as the film is still edited and constructed. In other words, a biopic is never accurate about everything as it is by it very nature, fictionalized.
Director F. Gary Gray, who comes from a music video background as well as directing Ice Cube in Friday in 1995, is able to keep the pace going with an impressive two hours and twenty-seven minutes running time. What helps dilute the film’s conventionality is its triple focus. Rather than follow one subject, it intertwines the journeys of three through their friendship, success, and fights. Eazy-E is played by New Orleans newcomer Jason Mitchell whose slinky dope dealer turned rapper is a memorable first turn. Julliard graduate, Corey Hawkins, steps into Dr. Dre’s DJ spinner shoes with a smooth focus that roots Dre in creative ambition. Ice Cube’s son, O’Shea Jackson Jr., had the fascinating opportunity to play his father. Jackson is a great look-a-like, but it is his aggressive vulnerability that is impressive. Ultimately, the chemistry between the three, and with the other two members of N.W.A., are why the film works as well as it does. Their friendship and fights are biopic gold, but could feel hackneyed without a deft hand.
N.W.A.’s illustration of Compton, their concerts in 1989, the creation of the Parental Guidance stickers for their album, and the racism and riots they endured are just a few of the many beats in Straight Outta Compton. At the core of the film is a debate on lyrical authenticity. Like country music, the rap genre continuously attests that artists write and rap what they experience – bringing the streets to the studio. This is discussed narratively, but structurally the music is used to echo the story. This also helps to keep the pace up as the creative process never seems to stop as Eazy-E’s Ruthless Records continues and Dr. Dre’s record company introduces new artists like Snoop Dogg and Tupac to the scene. Embedded in their feuding is also a debate about space, Compton, and the money that allows you to live in a house in the hills. Compton as a setting is as important here like it was in 1992’s Boyz in the Hood, directed by John Singleton, starring Ice Cube himself.
As I’ve said, despite the group members’ involvement so much could not be addressed in the film. Unfortunately, the group’s treatment of women is never really called out except in one or two warnings by manager Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti). The misogyny in their lifestyles was ever present in their music; their wives and children all take literal backseats here. Yet the film does not glamorize the group’s ascension, rather it shows the immense price they paid to get out of their hood. The political atmosphere surrounding N.W.A.s first album rings sadly reminiscent of current climates in the U.S. right now. How much has really changed in twenty five years? Cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, who routinely works with Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), captures an amazing show while depicting the LA Riots. A blue bandanna and red bandanna are tied up and held together, representing solidarity between the Crypts and Bloods, the famous feuding LA gangs. For me, whose researched heavily into musical biopics, Straight Outta Compton‘s ultimate triumph is that it connects music to its moments and gives an audience as much context as clarity on a subject’s passion and success.
A Powerhouse Goodbye
July 8, 2015
Amy 
(2015).
D: Asif Kapadia. E: Chris King. Featuring archived footage and new audio.
Deep into my dissertation writing on faux musical biopics, it is quite fitting that a documentary project like Amy should be released. Directed by Asif Kapadia whose previous project, Senna, brought him attention and awards, Amy is a distinct experience.
Amy follows the London born Amy Winehouse through sign posted chronology of her rise to success and painful fall into addiction that would claim her life in 2011. The film does attempt a chronology, but it isn’t caught up with showing everything and is better for it. Built around personal home video and performance footage the visual elements of the film capture Amy in her many stages. This means audiences see her as a young teen with her friends through to her disastrous performances. Much footage was clearly given personally to the project, a sign of Kapadia’s respectful handiwork.
Coupled with these videos are audio files of various friends, relatives and people who worked with Amy. Without the floating heads this audio commentary and stories transcends anything visually Kapadia could have done. The intimacy is tactile. Kapadia also uses Amy’s own song lyrics, writing them on screen to allow the subject herself to have a voice. There isn’t any denying that Amy had talent and it was remarkable. Thankfully Amy displays that for us to make the connection between her music and her life. Ultimately the success of the film is its stance behind its subject. Judgement is left behind and the film collects moments about its subject rather than attempting to rebuild the conflict that clearly her death represents.
Of course, Amy’s drug and alcohol addictions were complex. Amy takes the position of allowing many people to give their impressions without pointing fingers at the people in her life or on herself. This forces anyone sitting in a seat to ruminate on their own consumption of her struggles and death. Strobe flashes and footage of the paparazzi that staked out her Camden home beg the question, how responsible were we all for what happened? And why on earth did we watch it like it was television?
Second Time Round
July 7, 2015
New trailer for the Steve Jobs project from Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay and director Danny Boyle…
Steve Jobs
Electric Eccentricity
February 6, 2015
Mr. Turner (2014).
D/W: Mike Leigh. DP: Dick Pope. Starring: Timothy Spall/Paul Jesson/Dorothy Atkinson/Marion Bailey/Ruth Sheen/Lesley Manville/Sandy Foster/Martin Savage.
Amidst other biopics of the year emerges Mr. Turner. The film chronicles the latter half of British painter J.M.W.’ Turner’s life as he lives eccentrically and paints in the nineteenth century. Balancing between his travels for his inspiration and his complicated home life, Mr. Turner offers a biopic with little answers.
Delving into his familiar world of nineteenth century England, writer and director Mike Leigh is clearly in his element here. Along with veteran collaborator, cinematographer Dick Pope, the pair are able to lift Turner’s paintings into beautiful shots. Contrasting the grim and gruffly parts of Turner’s life are the beauty of what inspired him and these visuals help to complement an already brilliant performance by Timothy Spall.
Spall, an already vivid Leigh collaborator from 1999’s Topsy Turvy, is full throttle crotchety here. Half the time his responses are merely delivered in grunts and sounds that can only be termed as male, middle aged, and displeased. Yet Spall never allows it to be false, though there are some laborious sequences here that could have been edited down. One specific scene involving crying is as painful as anything actually said. The aging of Spall is handled with finesse and the physicality of Turner’s painting technique blended into the performance.
Mr. Turner only offers points of inspiration for Turner’s work. And when it comes to the personal plot points no explanation or motive is ever directly referenced. Not only does this feel fresh amidst other more obvious minded biopics, but gives depth to the script and Spall’s performance as anchor that would not have been possible. Spall is supported well by the entire cast with the women in the film illustrating a variety and voice common in Leigh’s other films. Lesley Manville nearly steals the show as a Scottish tinker who shows Turner how to play with different colored light. Gary Yershon’s score is spectacularly haunting and at times dissonant giving Mr. Turner an eerie quality, echoing its beautiful title sequence, among other things. It is a worthy addition to the Leigh canon.