The Monuments Men / The Book Thief

Double review time again, this time for two extremely vapid depictions of the second World War. The Monuments Men and The Book Thief are joint American-German productions so it's hardly a surprise each take a safe approach in their portrayal of Nazi Germany. The problem is it means both films loose instant credibility. Starting with the George Clooney's latest stab at direction, The Monuments Men is loosely based on a group of soldiers who were tasked with saving pieces of art before they could be destroyed by Hitler. Clooney's directorial career has been going good film-bad film thus far and, considering last time out he gave us the worthy The Ides Of March, we're safely back in underwhelming territory this time round. Making a comedy set around WWII is a tricky and delicate task, with the result that the film itself was delayed in post as they tried to balance the comedic aspects with the dramatic. The re-editing hasn't worked and Clooney and Grant Heslov's script is all at sea throughout. The cosmopolitan cast (Damon, Murray, Goodman, Dujardin, Balaban, Bonneville) are completely unmemorable and the films structure in which its splits them all up into various groups just highlights what a problem having such a large number of characters can cause when it comes to the narrative. Clooney certainly loves to be involved in productions set around dubya dubya too, but people (especially Europeans) are just too wise to this kind of nostalgic nonsense these days. I mentioned Hugh Bonneville above and his Downton Abbey director is the man calling the shoots for the film adaptation of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief. However Brian Percival appears to be stuck in the mindset of making everything stiff upper lipped and pretty what with the protagonists of his film appearing to live in a snow covered version of Germany that appears to have come straight off of a Christmas card. Said protagonists are Liesel (Sophie Nelisse) a young girl living with her adoptive family (Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson are the parents) who borrows / steals books from the mayor's house and shares them with a hidden Jewish refugee. Despite hints at the real darkness going on (and to be fair the film does pack a punch in the gut finale), this is just too whimsical for it to be tenable in any way. To wit: Whenever anyone expresses concern about terrors such as starvation or the punishment of harbouring a Jew, Rush's stock response is to wink! A voice over by "Death" which, though is the narrative device utilised in the novel, is completely unnecessary here and script wise things really don't work. At one point Watson puts their lives on the line and goes to Liesel's school to tell her some news about their stowaway - Why not just wait until she got home? As for the historical inaccuracies (apparently Germans play "soccer" and towards the end we're told that the US has occupied Germany, not the Allies).......Gott im Himmel......Rating: 4/10 (both).

Dallas Buyers Club

Director Jean-Marc Vallee has a short and somewhat eclectic resume, but in hindsight he was probably the perfect choice for Dallas Buyers Club what with his films heavily focused on relationships in both the straight and gay communities. Here we have Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a rodeo cowboy and electrician who, following admittance to hospital after an accident performing the latter occupation, is diagnosed with AIDS and given thirty days to live. However, on discovering there is (US unapproved) medication which helps improve his condition available in other countries, along with the help of fellow HIV sufferer Rayon (Jared Leto), he sets up a smuggling racket and distributes said drugs to other sufferers. This has been on the Hollywood slate since the mid-90's, but has only now found the financial backing. You can read into that what you will. Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack's script avoids clichés and addresses the attitudes of the time both blatantly (Woodroof is quickly ostracised by family and friends) and more subtly (at the start of the film the hospital staff wear surgical gloves and masks, which are slowly discarded as fuller understanding of the disease is made known). Jennifer Garner is good as a kindly doctor, but quickly gets lost amongst the tour-de-force performances of both McConaughey and Leto who, you'll be unsurprised to hear, both went method for this to capture the physicality of both their characters. In fact, both performances are so great the worthy subject matter gets a bit lost about halfway through and the film eventually meanders to a finish. On a side issue, the character of Rayon is actually a transgender woman which has to lead to complaints from various pressure groups that an actual transgender actor wasn't given Leto's part. Wrong though that may be, I'm afraid its just naivety to think that a dollar-chasing studio would have ever picked an unknown (regardless of sexual status) for such a prominent role. Going back to Vallee it's impressive he delivers such a solid production from a relatively small budget. With quick set ups and a one take only approach the order of the day this was wrapped in less than a month, which suggests a lot of studios and directors out there are missing a trick. Rating: 8/10.

Lone Survivor

The last film that Peter Berg presented to us was the risible Battleship, a film that only young teenage American boys would have got anything from, though what that was is open to debate (hopefully it was "I'll never direct a film as bad as that"). This time Berg moves away from such silliness as Lone Survivor tells the real life story of a group of US Navy SEALS and how, once their mission had gone awry, they had to fight for their lives in the Afghan hillside. Before going any further is should be made clear that the film is a dramatisation of the events (in reality it is highly inaccurate in places) and any mud slinging that has occurred post release you can read about yourself elsewhere. This is actually quite an odd film when all the dust has settled in the fact that it's actually too professional a production. Berg and company are getting some serious back slapping for all the extensive research that was undertaken before the camera's starting rolling, but for all the authenticity a film must still engage an audience. This is where the problem's begin. For all the correct uniforms, guns and military lingo you can give a soldier, you still need to explore their character and Berg's script fails miserably here. The fact the film is over long (even after being chopped in the editing suite) and still doesn't shine a proper spotlight on the persona's of the combatants just proves that Berg should have spent less time on getting the explosions as loud as possible and more time on getting some emotional balance into the end product. Speaking of the battle scenes, they are a mixture of brilliance and (unintentional) confusion. The scenes where the soldiers fall down the rugged mountainsides are bone-crunchingly captured with some highly impressive stunt work, but a lot of the action is captured with Berg getting as close as possible with the camera, meaning that at times its not only hard to tell what's going on, but also which soldier is which. It certainly isn't all bad though, particularly in the surprising final third where you'll be educated (surely only the most well read of us could tell you what pashtunwali is) and also feel uplifted that such heroism and humanity still exists in sure dire and brutal situations. In the end though, especially as this veers dangerously close to propaganda, I can't escape the feeling that some things are just better being read about and not shown. Rating: 6/10.

Inside Llewyn Davis

The title of the Coen brother's latest film doesn't appear on screen (at least, not in the traditional sense) throughout it's run time, but frankly, even if it did, I'd suggest you'd be hard pressed to remember it's name anyway further down the line. There's a theory that the Coen's output is either "one for them" (i.e the audience) or "one for us", with the "us" usually belonging amongst the weaker of their films. Inside Llewyn Davis doesn't break that trend, though in terms of its cinematic quality it's not bad at all. The acting and production values are spot on, but the film has a major hurdle to overcome in the fact that the main character is incredibly difficult to like. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a down on his luck folk singer in early 1960's New York, but as the Coen's spend the entire film basically showing us what a complete selfish arsehole he is, you'll just be thinking that he deserves all he gets. Though based on the real life story of folk singer Dave Van Rook, the film itself doesn't really have much of a plot and it's more of a mood piece. Plot lines that do show promise (the suicide of Davis' musical partner) are not really explored and all that happens is we just go from scene to scene watching Davis give effrontery a bad name. On the plus side there are a few decent one-liners and a mix up with a cat ("Where's his scrotum?") provides a chuckle. Overall though, much like John Goodman's part as an odious jazz musician, it's all just a bit pointless. Plus, if the Coen's think people will warm to a character that abandons an injured cat, well, good luck with that. Rating: 5/10.