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.

Non-Stop

In years to come I think it's unlikely they'll be releasing retrospective box-sets regarding Jaume Collet-Sera cannon of films. However, from his short career so far he's proved he's a safe pair of hands when it comes to productions where the plots revolve around hidden or mysterious elements. So he's in his comfort zone here as, on a flight from New York to London, air marshall Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) receives a text from a passenger informing him that someone on the plane will be killed every 20 minutes unless a ransom is paid. The problem is Marks can't find the culprit and when the bodies start piling up his employees on the ground and the passengers and crew begin to suspect Marks himself is up to something. It's as ludicrous as it sounds. For example, though Marks is an air marshall he, get this, doesn't like flying! Always a pre-requisite qualification for that kind of job I've always thought. Crucially though, the film is a big pile of dumb fun. Collet-Sera has form when it comes to hiding plot twists (see the whammy reveal at the end of Orphan) and here he does it in the form of highlighting so many people (in the form of a cross section of society) as possible suspects, that you can't really spend much time thinking about who the culprit could be (though if you know your B-list actors you might have a fair clue about what's going down). Neeson can do this type of action malarkey in his sleep now (imagine you told someone that ten years ago), but Michelle Dockery looks in shock before anything has actually happened and Julianne Moore just looks like death warmed up. If you're not going to suspend your disbelief then don't bother checking in. For the rest of us, our first entrant in the stupidly fun Friday night film award of the year has touched down. I mean, how many films do you get where the co-pilot screams at his airplane, "Come on, you wanker!". Rating: 7/10.

The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty

Though not synonymous outside of the US, you've probably heard someone described as a "Walter Mitty type character", the inference being that person is a bit of a dreamer who imagines a fantasy life which they could never possibly lead. Ben Stiller's new film (his first as director in five years) pretty much follows this fantastical template, though it's only loosely based on James Thurber's original short story from the 1930's. In this version Mitty (Stiller) works in the photography department of a soon to be closed magazine and finds himself on a mission to locate a missing photo negative that has been mooted to be the front cover of the last ever issue. Before long Mitty is day dreaming of adventures that take him far and wide in pursuit of said negative. The film has plenty of entertaining moments (look out for the great scene where Mitty pulls off a series of cracking tricks on a skateboard whilst love interest Cheryl (Kristen Wiig) keeps looking away at the most inopportune moments), but when its all said and done there really isn't much substance behind all the spectacle. In addition, with the exception of the portrayal of the downsizing managers (all young, bearded and coffee drinkers) this lacks the satire and the darkness of the original material, settling instead on a much lighter concoction. Whether this works or not is hard to say as I'm not sure who the target audience for this is meant to be. You can look at this film two ways I suppose. One is that its a bit of a waste of your time as, in effect, we have a film that utilises a MacGuffin within a MacGuffin. Alternatively you could say this is a silly bit of entertaining nonsense, capped off with one of the most moving and heart warming denouements of the year. As for the actual direction, this is easily Stiller's most impressive film thus far. Rating: 7/10.

12 Years A Slave

I've always thought that I would have enjoyed Steve McQueen's previous films (Hunger and Shame) a lot more if he had dropped the pretentiousness, reeled in the drawn out scenes and realised that what he thinks is "art" the majority of the public would describe as "arse". Thankfully, 12 Years A Slave is affectation less McQueen, though with the subject matter of this film being slave era America, it's safe to say that even McQueen knows that this is no time for self indulgence. Adapted from the 1853 memoir of the same name by Solomon Northup, the film focuses on Northup's (Chiwetel Ejiofor) ordeal as he's kidnapped as a free man and sold into slavery. This is an impressive film, which McQueen doing justice to Northup's story with as meticulous an eye to detail as the productions research could uncover, ranging from the historically accurate clothes to the employment of dialogue coaches to capture the intonations of the time. In effect this is a documentary of a person's life and with minutiae such as this we're a long way from Tarantino's bombastic approach in Django Unchained and the somewhat shameful grandstanding of Spielberg's Lincoln. Ejiofor is one of the best actors around when it comes to portraying dignity in the most inhuman situations and with a Scrabble winning support cast made up from Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch and Lupita Nyong'o the thesping is solid across the board. Arguably it's actually Sarah Paulson as the wife of Fassbender's unhinged plantation owner who is the most memorable character of all, smugly enjoying the trappings that were afforded to the fomenters of the slavery system, whilst also taking wicked pleasure in the mental and physical torture going on around her. You'll know from McQueens previous work (including his short films) that he isn't shy when it comes to showing the form of the human body and the abuses put upon it by ourselves and others and he doesn't hold back here with a number of near unbearable to watch whipping scenes. These scenes of brutality are a tough watch, though it's actually the sideways glances at the era that are the most disturbing at all (one moment has Northup stumble across a lynching in a woods which is portrayed as a simple daily run of the mill occurrence). The film isn't without it's faults though. Sometimes the more belligerent players veer towards caricatures and Hans Zimmer's score is one of his most unmemorable for a long time. Also, though this is now being put forward as a touchstone film that everyone should see in order to understand the history of that time, this does actually lack quite a bit of scope and, though it's always up to the individual person to investigate more themselves, the film could have been improved by touching more on the full scale of the slavery system at that time. Overall though this is what mainstream adult film making is all about, impressively achieved with a budget of under 20 million dollars as well. Rating: 8/10.