Bad Neighbours (JA)

After dealing with demonic horrors of the end of time in This is the End, Seth Rogan now faces the far more difficult and dangerous challenges of domestic life. Apparently the next logical adversary after Satan are students, as he and wife (Rose Bryne) do battle with the anarchic booze swilling fraternity moving in next door.

This set up leads up, of course, to the traditional gross out antics, chaos and other such familiar items from the modern mainstream comedy check list. Therefore, prepare for another round of the usual penis gags, excessive alcohol consumption and numerous illegal substances, and a hero who wants to be young and irresponsible, and is gradually faced with the need to mature. So far so cliché, yet what is nice about Bad Neighbours is that it features a suitable nemesis in Zac Efron’s fraternity president faced with a terrible and understandably disturbing vision of his future self next door. It may sound trite but this is by far the best and most interesting idea the film has, especially since Efron remains extremely watchable throughout the film, appearing in comparison to everyone else to be strangely believable and, dare I say it, human. 

Meanwhile Seth Rogen simply does his thing, which is perfectly watchable albeit repetitive, while Rose Bryne is fine, with the most interesting aspect of the character being that it is stupid and irresponsible, character traits that are so rarely possessed by women in films. That, after all, is strictly a male prerogative, something the film is all to glad to point out as it invokes the dark spectre of Kevin James, perhaps simply in an effort to look better in comparison (they succeed). Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but the act of waving credentials of their own film so rampantly in the audience’s faces as to discuss it onscreen, does seem a little heavy handed.

Of course the main question one has to ask of a comedy is whether the thing is actually funny, and here the answer is kind of ‘meh’. There are a few reasonable gags but none that are really new, while the gross out has been done before grosser and funnier. In addition, it may be nice to see this strange visage of American almost-manhood doing stupid things, but I could not help but want more than just the same old rigmarole that has become oh so familiar in comedy.

Especially since this film does have some good ideas, but simply does not know how to utilise them effectively. Which is very disappointing, especially considering Zac Efron’s sort of villain is busy stealing the show, and you can’t help but wish he had better material to work with as I am sure he could have produced a few good laughs. Not to say Bad Neighbours is well bad. There are more than enough bad comedies in the world; unfortunately, there are also too many mediocre ones. 

 James Absolon

Tracks

Walking Wonder

Accompanied only by four camels and her dog, Robyn Davidson set a new benchmark for defying the odds by walking 1700 miles, the equivalent of going from London to Ankara, across the Australian Outback in 1977. Since featuring in National Geographic magazine and the global bestseller’s charts, this heroine’s inspirational tale is now told in John Curran’s brilliantly striking new film. No other release in 2014 has even come close to matching the same cinematic excellence.

From Mia Wasikowska’s perfect performance as the wandering writer to Mandy Walker’s epic cinematography, Tracks presents a beguiling odyssey into an extraordinary world, seldom exhibited on screen aside from the realms of cheap science-fiction. Few films have the temerity to leave the protagonist and her motivations largely unexplored, yet Davidson’s travails, predominantly consisting of marching forwards endlessly, is all the better for its understated and coy tone. Her ordeals left me totally enraptured from the first step to the last.

At no point is the viewer patronised by clumsy conservationist manifestoes and emotional motifs. Instead the script provides enough clues for a reasonably intelligent person to find their own conclusions about aborigine settlement issues, Davidson’s apparent introversion and her reasons for embarking on such an astonishingly lonely trek.

As in the case of his under-appreciated work on The Painted Veil, Curran has captured a stunning and resplendent landscape through his camera. Australian movies have never been shy of parading their natural habitat in front of a lens (Walkabout, Mad Max) but it has never before been shown as personally as through the eyes of Davidson’s wandering figure.

As heinous as it may sound though, even such radiantly beautiful geography fades to the background when compared with Wasikowska’s prominent screen presence, dominating every frame with a sensitive blend of mystery, fragility and courage. The same steel courses through her veins as Sigourney Weaver in full Ellen Ripley mode.

I hope Wasikowska never wins an Oscar - in the kindest sense possible - because her choices of roles to date exude a ballsiness which the Academy cannot stomach from mainstream actresses; unless, of course, they are named Jodie Foster. If there was a similarly prestigious award, but without the political and financial determinants, then she would have surely won it by now. After diverse parts in Stoker, Alice in Wonderland and The Double, it is easy to notice an admirably uncompromising and ambitious streak in the twenty-four year old.

Adam Driver is also great as Rick Smolan, the photographer that documents Davidson’s journey across the wilderness. Having been cast in the new Star Wars update, his profile is set to soon explode into the limelight.

For a film which will entertain, entrance and inspire in equal measure, Tracks is the only place to look this summer.

ST

 

Pompeii

Paul WS Anderson has covered a lot of disasters in his movies, from Alien vs. Predator grudge matches to zombie plagues, and scientists creating a good old fashioned portal to hell. Yet until now, he has never actually made a disaster movie per se. He amends that absence with Pompeii, a journey back to perhaps history’s most famous volcanic eruption, with all the CGI, historical inaccuracy and tacked-on romance you could ever wish for.

Leading the desperate attempts to avoid fiery doom is Games of Thrones star Kit Harrington, who presumably regrets seeking warmer climes. He plays a gladiator who, as a small child, witnessed the massacre of his entire Celtic horse tribe, which is important for two reasons: firstly, it means he has a reason to hate Kiefer Sutherland’s remarkably cartoonish villain, and secondly, it gives him magic horse talking powers. His other concern throughout the film is a little star-crossed romance with an upper class Roman girl (Emily Browning) - presumably  because it worked so well in Titanic (financially at least), and as the filmmakers felt the need to stretch the material. Both however lack characterisation, appearing as pretty-looking vague stereotypes to amuse and distract the audience from glaring errors in the script and the fact that the version of the ancient world they have created clearly comes from cloud cuckoo land.  Not that it really matters after all this is not why you're here.

But of course you don’t come to see a film about Pompeii for the love story or for historical validity. No, the real selling point of a disaster movie is, well, the disaster - Mount Vesuvius going boom, which it does, eventually. First, though, they feel the need to pay homage to Gladiator, or more to the point steal some of the more iconic lines and scenes. Which of course are not as good as in the original to the point of amusement, while the whole film comparatively lacks the scope, spectacle, originality, budget and, perhaps worst of all, blood (yes, we see men stabbing and hacking at one another as hoped, but there is no impact as we do not care for characters and it feels like it has all been done with dull practice blades).

Eventually of the course, the Volcano decides to do us the great courtesy of killing everyone, with building collapsing and great balls of CGI reigning down from the sky. All of which, it must be said, looks quite spectacular and is really well done visually. Yet it serves only to be pretty and distracting from the events depicted in the escape that become ever more outlandish and ridiculous. It is hard to be on the edge of your seat when it is impossible to take anything remotely seriously.

Pompeii’s pretty visuals are distracting to a point, but do not expect anything else from it. It is predictable and clichéd, offering nothing new or particularly exhilarating. Ultimately, the film simply does not go off with much of a bang.

JA

The Other Woman

Wife Woes

There is a single moment in The Other Woman which teasingly hints at the great film which could so easily have been.

A betrayed stay-at-home wife (Leslie Mann) shuffles aimlessly through a supermarket after she discovers her husband’s shocking infidelity. Her lonely eyes gaze at the encircled Stepford wives, all costumed in uniform attire of bright polo shirts, golf sweaters and cream trousers. Here are the idle and docile women, wracking their brains over which Waitrose-like food to buy while their partners earn millions and sleep around.

This tiny sequence lasts a matter of seconds but totally outclasses the rest of the movie with its penetrating sentiment. Imagine a writer like Woody Allen mining the bourgeois suburban relationship circuit for giggles amid meaningful reflection on the toxic fall-out from spousal betrayal. Except that you don’t have to. Whereas last year’s Blue Jasmine brilliantly commented on a world of sleaze and white collar obnoxiousness, the latest comedy vehicle for Cameron Diaz is unoriginal, shallow and abysmally unfunny.

When two women realise they have been used by the same man (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) these humiliated girls decide to fight back. Pretty soon the scheming couple are joined in their plot by a third mistress (Kate Upton).

Revenge comedies are hardly a dependable genre but Nick Cassavetes has made a film which lacks the laughs to even appear competitive alongside 9 to 5 and John Tucker Must Die. Aside from the fragmentary supermarket scene, each segment feels unintentionally insincere. Here be glitz, glamour and dollar galore but no substance to make you actually care. Only a piece of comedy gold could justify the overwhelming superficiality of it all yet audiences are sadly given a script about as funny as an episode of Waking the Dead.

Leslie Mann receives a few chuckles for her energetic bouts of physical buffoonery (she plays a good drunk) but the lines she utters - whether scripted or unwisely improvised - fail to grasp any understanding of what makes people smirk. Now I know what Bridesmaids would be like without the humour, pathos and intelligence. Maybe after ten vodkas I might finally find some amusement in this rubbish.

At least the scenery looks pretty. Although with location shots in trendy New York, New England and the Bahamas, it would be impossible for the cinematography to look anything other than picturesque. But these beautiful panoramas detach the story from its moral footing. No humility remains to relate with genuine people and the realities of ambiguous human emotions. Indeed, at no point is there any attachment to the characters or their dilemma; each actor is just as irritating as the next.

After a purple patch of fun films for females in recent years, The Other Woman is a timely reminder that Hollywood still stinks at writing for women. This is less everyday sexism and more plastic, ignorant, misdirected, boring, hollow dross.

 ST

Locke: A History of Phones in Film

The continued success of Locke, currently playing for a third week in cinemas, demonstrates just how much dramatic action can be generated through the humble telephone. Despite being set entirely in Tom Hardy’s car as he makes his way along the motorway to the birth of his child, the universe of the film is expanded to introduce multiple characters and action occurring off-screen thanks to the hands-free phone he spends the whole 90 minutes speaking into. Following in the footsteps of Phone Booth and Buried, it manages to tell a story with twists and pathos, all while retaining the sense of claustrophobia of a refined space that the film does not once escape. 

Films like these may be in the extreme with regard to their reliance on the telephone, but the device – so omnipotent that we barely notice it – plays a vital role in countless films. 

With less than twenty years separating Alexander Graham Bell’s first words on a telephone and the first ever motion picture hosted by the Lumiere brothers, the histories of cinema and the telephone has always been entwined, with the changing nature of telecommunications shaping the way stories on film are told.

Though appearances were scarce in the silent era as the phone had yet to be established as commonplace in the average household, as soon as people could talk in films they were talking over the phone. As demonstrated by a running joke in the original Scarface, which has the eponymous character’s secretary persistently fail at working the telephone before eventually shooting it in frustration (a great gag of overcompensation replicated in Star Wars some 45 years later: (http://tinyurl.com/cdjosep)the phone was still unreliable in its relative infancy.  

But by the fast-talking screwball comedies of the 1930s and 40s, telephones were used effectively to facilitate the relentless pace of the dialogue. Most of His Girl Friday consists of Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant successively picking up and slamming down phones (http://tinyurl.com/oj3h85m), while the discrepancy between what a character thinks is going on down the other end of the line and what we see really happening  is often exploited for laughs, as in Brining Up Baby when Katherine Hepburn pretends to be attacked by a leopard. 

 

Though it is often said how comic actors need other talented performers to bounce off, many of cinema’s funniest scenes derive from actors talking at a telephone. The aforementioned Cary Grant was particularly good at this, while the comic genius Peter Sellers flourished with the sole control over his scene in Dr Strangelove as the US president talking to his (unheard) Russian counterpart. 

Whether or not we can hear the recipient of a call is one of the subtle but significant ways in which action is shaped. While scenes like Sellers’s above– and those that utilise that distinct tinny sound to denote someone’s voice over the phone - keep the focus on the actor, instances when we witness both ends of the line help expand a story’s scope. This use of montage and the possibility of being in multiple places at once is one of the main things that set cinema apart from the theatre, and the phone is a particularly practical means of jumping from one scene to another in just a moment. 

Phones not only give characters access to others far away, but also provide a more depersonalised form of contact, which helps us explain how Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke are more candid to each other when talking through pretend phones in Before Sunrise (http://tinyurl.com/krrywun ). There is a certain comfort talking to someone who you know to be far away, and horror films have many times tapped into the terrifying scenario where that buffer is breached: in Nightmare on Elm Street Freddy Kruiger’s tongue somehow bursts out of the receiver, while phone calls in Lost Highway and Scream become unbearably tense once it transpires that the voice on the other end is not where we thought it was http://tinyurl.com/kdx9m3v , http://tinyurl.com/mlrcnn2 .

Even outside the horror genre, the phone provides dramatic situations not possible in everyday talk – the abrupt hang up, the unanswered call and the ignored call all carry great dramatic weight. The very sound of phone ringing is enough to unsettle us as viewers conditioned to answering it, and certainly ramps up the tension in this scene out of No Country for Old Men. 

As the technology of phones advance, the way stories are told on film must adapt. The days when phone booths functioned as little urban islands for communication (see Dirty Harry) are all but over following the invention of the mobile phone (via the pager, which played such a key part in movies from the 1990s and season one of The Wire). 

Mobiles have, as satirised in this scene in Scott Pilgrim vs the World ( http://tinyurl.com/mrudsvb), hugely sped up the time it takes to get in touch with one another, and as such have had big consequences on the way action unfolds. For instance, it now seems too contrived to have a character unable to track down another given the ubiquity of phones. The Departed, with its constant phoning, texting and double-crossing, is perhaps the finest example of a thriller in the age of mobiles, with twists in the plot occurring relentlessly as characters are able to access vital information at the press of a button.   

Mobiles are similarly fundamental to The Bourne Ultimatum, where the phone call is no longer presented as a private conversation. The swift way the CIA use Bourne's phone signal to trace his  location taps into the current climate of the surveillance state, by now practiced on a far wider and more sophisticated level than that the more crude techniques explored in 1974’s The Conversation.  

While Bourne documents contemporary technology at government-level, this year’s Her draws upon the smartphone to critique modern day private lives, envisioning a near future where phones have dominated our lives so much that a romantic relationship is possible with them. The protagonist’s deep understanding is far away from the comical ignorance of the secretary in Scarface – by now phone technology has engulfed our whole lives. 

Phones have, therefore, always been a part of the movies, but perhaps never so much as they are today. Both Her and Locke could both even be considered in their own distinct ‘Phone Film’ genre, given how their very essence are concentrated within the device. With phones more omnipresent than ever, expect many more films in the future to be shaped entirely by a phone.

SP