Money Never Sleeps

Following on from V for Vendetta, I caught Oliver Stone's 'Money Never Sleeps' the long anticipated sequel to infamous 80s Yuppy flick 'Wall Street'. It seemed like fate was leading me down a path of films that critique society and our 'lust' for money. Here Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is back but seemingly 'cured' of his love of money, he exits prison and starts a tour of motivational talks about how greed it no longer good, but rather 'legal'. Hmm... from the moment he leaves prison and stands alone and unimportant in the world you know this is another Gekko rouse.

I would summarise the plot but it left me scratching my head. I'm all for films that flatter the audience by assuming they're intelligent enough to follow complicated plots (thank you Christopher Nolan) but this movie needed one of two things, either for protagonist Shia LeBeuff to slow down his zippy NuwYourka dialogue, or to hand out a guide to financial services abbreviations. I do not, nor ever will, work in 'the city' and I found it pretty hard to follow the details of the tale. And a moral tale it is - I know that because it's Oliver Stone - but I'm not wholly sure I understood the lesson objective.

So this is what I took away from it. Gecko is not the worst thing in Wall Street, since he's been inside a new, super rich, super immoral breed of b*stard bankers (Bretton James played by Josh Brolin) has taken over. This breed like to use a lot of war metaphors to show that it's not about the money, just the thrill of conquering others. Jake (Shia LaBeouff) is a plucky trader, who's impressive money making talents are used solely to fund green energy, that little halo of his doesn't stop shining there, as he spends the film seeking financial revenge for the death of his mentor Louis Zabel (Frank Langella). His savvy city skills are blindsided by a smooth taking Gekko who manipulates him to take a job with mega bank run by Bretton all part of a bigger plan to reuinte with his daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan), Jake's fiance.

There's some weird things which are never fully resolved in this plot:

1. The idealistic, righteous Winnie hates her father and doesn't trust money, yet she agrees to marry a Wall Street trader - Freud I'll leave that up to you
2. Jake's mother pops up occasionally (played by Susan Saranadon) as a strange metaphor for victims of the property boom, to show how the 'little' people have greed too.
3. Gekko is supposed to be a terrifying metaphor for all that's wrong with the finance world - but at the end he's a soppy Granddad, smiling and cooing at family BBQs, which kind of crushes the critique.
4. There's too much 'bad daddy' symbolism to keep up with: Gekko and Jake, Jake and Louis, Louis and Bretton. It's a roundabout of relationships that was dizzying to focus on.
5. Charlie Sheen rocks up reviving his role as 'Bud Fox' for a swift cameo to show he's now rich... and bland, and boring, and incapable of acting as demonstrated by his stunted reaction to Gekko. He should have stayed in the 80s.

This is a director who has focussed on exposing the political edge of America, but like Gekko, he clearly has mellowed with time. As sadly, for a film where 'money never sleeps', Stone presents a movie where there's no moral wake up call for any of the characters and their cavalier actions.

Nightcrawler

As a critic of the media, this film doesn't so much as subtly highlight the immortality of our news broadcasters, rather it points to them in a shaming, flashing, neon finger. We get it. Media is bad. Very bad if your state-side and I have to say, it did make me grateful for the less sensationalist and balanced view of Auntie. In a world where a shady metal merchant won't hire 'a thief' but the local cable network will snatch his hand off, we wonder who's the true criminal?

Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a petty thief eeking out a living in LA during the day, while ingesting hours of motivational business talk online at night. He stumbles into a new career of being a 'stinger' crawling LA at night with a camcorder to capture the latest horrid crimes on film to peddle out to the local news broadcasters. Desperate news director Nina Romina (Rene Russo) can't resist the chance to boost her station's ratings, so encourages Lou to seek out new material at increasingly dangerous lengths.

This film starts so well, it creates a wonderful atmosphere about LA drawing a craving from me to return again and explore this exotic city. You really get a sense of summer heat, mystery and an oppressiveness which makes this coastal metropolis an appealing location. Like Drive, Nightcrawler starts by making LA another character in the film, as we are guided through a series of impressive ariel shots before landing in closely on Gyllenhall stealing metal, metaphorically on the wrong side of the tracks. Unlike Drive, the cinematography in Nightcrawler seemed to die out to a series of stock imagery which left me feeling a bit 'meh'. If I was feeling generous I might think it was a comment about how the media drains authenticity from it's world. No. I think it's just lazy editing.  

Rene Russo's character is sadly a bit one dimensional: flat and singular in her purpose in the movie. The risk of losing her job in the ratings war eclipses her need for professional journalism. Her remit is to sell a version of the news that sinks deep into the public's morbid curiosity. As she states matter of factly, every story is 'a woman in a rich neighbourhood running screaming down the street'. We can't criticise her cynical and depressing style to broadcasting, as sadly it's one that's lapped up by so many consumers. 

Gyllenhaal has a tough role in this film, as his character is constantly playing a character. The affable, friendly local man, who works hard, and repeats business speak mantra like a robot, exposing the benefits of the American Dream like a blind cult follower. There's only one line that gives away his obvious real personality when he responds to his co-worker that "what if it isn't that I don't get people. I just don't like them." I really feel he needed more scenes by himself where we could glimpse an insight into his true sociopathic mind. Occasionally watering a plant, doesn't really signal this. It meant that Gyllenhaal becomes a bit flat and robotic and ultimately I didn't care if he succeeded or failed.

So out of these two media peddlers, who is worse? Lou provides this material because she buys it: she pays for it, because he's got it. Essentially they both want success, but the irony is they become worse as people, justifying their immoral actions in order to be perceived as 'better' by society. The smiling interns at the end demonstrate how 'normal' these malpractices have become.

Ostensibly, this is a film about spin and that any tale can be rewritten: personal life story or the 9 o'clock news. Whatever sells. At any cost.

Interstellar

Best not hang about in space

I've never been a big science nerd, I struggled to get my GCSE Physics and from the moment I threw down my biro and walked out that exam hall I proudly thought I'd never have to deal with any of this stuff again. It was like the final scene from The Breakfast Club - hand in air, liberation from science. Then they make this film. Oh boy. Look, if you like your astrophysics reviewed in detail, then look away now. As I confess, even with that hard-earned B grade, like many Christopher Nolan films, I feel I need to see this film a few more times to really get my head round it. 

So, in the 'some-time' future, Earth has been rendered a giant dust bowl by a global crop blight which is slowly choking the life of out the planet. Professor Brand (Michael Cain) is a NASA physicist who is secretly working on a formula to transport the planet to a new home by manipulating gravity and pushing us all through a wormhole. Simple. Well... not quite. A team of researchers let by former NASA pilot, now small time farmer, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) must zip through the wormhole and explore the new galaxy to find a planet suitable for mankind's new home.

That summary doesn't really do this film justice, as it's not really about that. Time is linear, and so is that plot, but the themes and ideas in this film extend, manipulate and bend further than gravity around a black hole.Turns out, it's all about love. Sheldon from Big Bang Theory will no doubt be disgusted. 

Here are my thoughts on it:

- 'They' have saved us. But it's not what you think, it's not extraterrestrials, neither is it an omniscient God, but rather, it is us. Humans, from the future, who have mastered time and space to communicate messages to save us via a Tesseract contained within the worm-hole. Helpfully, they made it look like that back of Murph's (Jessica Chastain) library bookcase. Personally, this feels a bit like hubris - can we really be confident we are alone in the universe? That we are the pinnacle of evolution that nothing greater exists past, present or future? Meh. Some of the humans I know, could win a Darwin Award, so I'm still hopeful we have time to evolve further. Dare I hope, evolve so far that we don't need to ravage our planet and each other?

 - Mocked by many, Andrew Lloyd Webber had it right when he wrote 'Love, love changes everything'. Who knew? Quite literally, it is the only force which can extend beyond our framework of physics. As Brand (Hathaway) comments, 'why do we love people who have gone' as she laments the potential loss and potential hope of being reunited with a fellow NASA nerd Edmonds who's pioneered the trip ahead of them. I liked this idea and it struck a cupid chord with me - love is a force which cannot be proven or explained by science - you can't prove it, but we all believe it. We willingly accept this, but not the idea of a God, or the concept of Tesseracts shaped like libraries - we are a contrary bunch.

- The metaphorically named Dr. Mann (Matt Damon) demonstrated the extent and desperation for our will to live. For me, his unapologetically selfish actions throw open a new debate about euthanasia. How can you really tell someone wants to die, as in those fading final moments, our will to survive can lash out like a primeval animal instinct in us.

 - As a Christian it make me think a bit more about how ideas around creation might not be so 'crazy', now I've got my head around the concept of relativity (three hours on one planet in one galaxy is 27 years on another planet in another galaxy). What's a hundred billion years to an omniscient being - could be 1 day in our time frame? But that's a whole other bag of cats to contend with so I'll leave it there...

This has just scratched the surface of a rich and interesting film. I'm still not entirely clear on the point Nolan is making, but it's a beautifully shot film with a suitably oppressive soundtrack by Hans Zimmer, (who ever since True Romance has not missed a step for creating perfect atmosphere). It's worthy of second or third watch, but immediate impressions are pretty stellar (sigh) and it could rocket (sigh) with cult success as I can imagine Blue Ray and DVD sales will skyrocket. Okay. I'm done now.

The Departed

I've spent part of today driving in my car perfecting my New England accent after living in south Boston for two hours last night in Martin Scorsese's 2006 film The Departed. The rounded drawl of the 'mick cops' in this film seems to softly melt into your subconscious, so all day I've felt the need to swear profusely in this lilting accent where syllables just dribble into each other.

This film poses an interesting question summed up by Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) at the beginning of the film 'when you're starting down the barrel of a loaded gun, what's the difference?' meaning, how fine is that line between cop/ robber, murder/ protector. It's all a matter of perspective. This theme is revisited throughout the film in different ways. Interestingly, it's offensive when Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) casually hurls homophobic insults at the Fire Department rugby team after loosing in a match, but it's equally so when Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) does and we're supposed to sympathise with him. Billy's first meeting with Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Dignam (Mark Wallberg) is littered with extremely offensive, but I hate to admit it, very funny one liners. Well, it is a Scorsese film so you'd naturally expect a colourful arrange of dialogue, but I think the point here is to show that these men are no different. Criminals are cops and vice versa, so really who's the 'good' guy in the traditional sense.

Billy wonders this while deep undercover with Francis, he notes that he's not murdered anyone, but everyone else he knows has and he even mocks his psychiatrist Madolyn (Vera Farmiga) for believing any cop could legitimately cry for using his weapon on a felon. With the brutal ending (SPOILER) where almost everyone is killed off, it is only Billy who ends the film literally without blood on his hands. There's other comparison's between the crims and the cops - such as Ellerby's (Alec Baldwin) glee at capturing his enemy, but his sudden, unpredictable and violent mood swings directed at the nearest to him - reminiscent of Mr French's (Ray Winstone) attitude throughout the movie.

I was drawn into this skilful way this this cat and mouse chase folds out, the way Damon and DiCaprio hunt each other, circling around like vultures, inching closer to their kill. Each side realises there's rat in this game and it's a race to expose them first. DiCaprio is on good form with trademark shouting - after all he does play a lose cannon very well and Damon is equally believable as the bad guy, deviating from his cast type as the benign hero. Over two hours we see the players in this game edge closer with skill, mastery and nerve, but it's the brutal and abrupt ending which I think summarises the main message in the film. Ostensibly, the futility of crime - of those who cause it, and those who try to catch it. These men stand one inch apart on the same moral line.

Mirror Mirror

Wow. I am glad I waited patiently until the end credits otherwise I would not have been blessed with such a great surprise, and one that sums up the oddity of this film - but more on that later.

Still trying to find the fairest of them all

Mirror Mirror is a re-hash of the familiar fairytale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (feels like it's not PC to say that). This time Snow White (Lily Collins) is an orphan princess locked in the highest room in the tallest tower (yes, really), she is the rightful ruler of her kingdom but her wicked stepmother (Julia Roberts) is one hell of a vain, evil queen. A charming prince rocks up (Armie Hammer) and in a series of strange plot twists ends up not really saving the day.

Director Tarsem Singh has created a beautiful, fantasical world for this fairytale but there's a real clash when he tries to decide its genre. It's not weird enough for fantasy, not funny enough for comedy (though there are some feeble attempts) and it's not emotional enough for tweenie romance. So what is it? Some horrible mish-mash in between.

I get it, it's a kids film and the plot does jog on at a pleasing, predictable pace with a mix of action, romance and 'comedy' to keep boys and girls interested throughout the 90 minutes. There's some mis-en-scene stolen from the mind of Tim Burton, costumes that nod to the outlandish outfits of the Panem Capital, and some beautifully shot woodland scenes which seem like a Disney version of Game of Thrones. Everything has a convincing layer of 'fake' about it, the snow, the makeup, but sadly, also the performances.

Snow White is annoying. You'd be forgiven for expecting at any moment for a cartoon blue bird to land on her shoulder. Her movements are choreographed carefully to be like a true Disney princess and her voice so saccharine I got toothache. This is intended to be tongue in cheek as the queen makes several references to how irritating she is, yet sadly Collins is a vase - lovely to look at but pretty blank on the inside. So when Snow White gets all bad-ass half way through the film it's too far a leap of faith for the audience to take - it's just not believable, even in a such an obvious fantasy world. It's a pity too, as like with Snow White and the Huntsman, there was a chance to hop on the feminist band wagon and create a sassy hero from an insipid, beautiful zero. Blink and you'll miss the 'comedy' when she asks the prince not to rescue her 'but it's been focus grouped and it works' and sadly, in this case it would have done.

However. All of this was forgiven when 'No Beard, No Sword, No Bean' Sean Bean turns up with a beard and a beard (it must be in his contract) as the benevolent, dispossessed King. This gruff northern star races through his five minutes of dialogue to round up this fairytale in a very predicable ending... well is it. There is one surprise up Singh's sleeve. A Bollywood ending which comes out of nowhere! No-one was more surprised that Sean Bean who stands awkwardly in the background while the whole cast chant 'love' and shimmy around him. Genius.

V for Vendetta

'People should not be afraid of their governments;
governments should be afraid of their people"

Pick up a pitchfork and get ready to threaten the establishment, a revolution is a-coming!

I re-watched this the other day as I was inspired by a TED talk on the 7 deadly sins - this one focussed on 'greed' and it was an eloquent talk by an American plutocrat who had made billions during the dot.com boom. Even though he was considered to be in the top 0.1 percent of wealth worldwide, I'd never heard of him. He even made that point. How can a man who owns as much money as him, not be on the average person's radar? His talk was the antithesis of the famous Gordan Gecko 'Greed Is Good' mantra - he said it's bad, it's corrupting as it isolates people from each other. The opposite of greed in his mind was community. How can you be part of a community where the gulf between rich and poor is as wide as it was prior to the French Revolution?

After this man's talk I realised a film like V for Vendetta was starting to feel far more real and present than Alan Moore intended when he wrote the graphic novel during Thatcher's rein.

In light of the London Riots a few years back, and other bleak 'austerity' news reports since, the premise is alarmingly realistic. A lone vigilante known a 'V' (Hugo Weaving) is the sole voice of resistance against a fascist, oppressive regime ('Norsefire') headed by former Tory and now High Chancellor Adam Sutler (John Hurt). This is sold to the people through toe curling propaganda by the 'voice of London' Lewis Prothero (Roger Allam) and enforced on the people by Peter Creedy 'the finger' and head of the secret police (Tim Piggot-Smith). Just to make the point that every fraction of the establishment is corrupt, the church is headed by sexually dodgy Archbishop Lilliman (John Standing). In this world where homosexuality is a crime and non-conformity results in a mysterious deaths and disappearances, is media worker Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman). On a night out, she rebels against the curfew to enjoy a night out, only to be caught and threatened with rape by the secret police. Saving her from the scene is V, and from this point her life is manipulated until she 'sees' the truth of the brutal world around her that has been normalised through years of not-so-subtle enforcement.

I love the iconography of this film: the fascist looking banners of the ruling party, the strong contrast of red and black in a hostile set of banners not too indistinct from the Third Reich; the Guy Fawkes mask; the dystopian, gritty streets of London; and finally, of course, the Palace of Westminster ripe for the talking, glittering against the Thames. These icons exaggerate the themes of the film especially the Guy Fawkes mask, which naturally harks back to the original historic revolution, but also allows V to be a social representative. As the protagonist he could literally be anyone, or everyone, who's disenfranchised by the establishment. Evey's final lines even state this when she states 'He was all of us'. It's a trick authors sometimes use; give away as little as you can about the main character, so your reader can imbue themselves into the role.

The main theme is of course about civil liberties and freedoms being usurped by the state for our 'own protection'. If you believe a lie and absorb the fear created by the media, then it allows for the most terrifying injustices to take place while the public apathetically sit by. Hence the Nazi symbolism. It was apathy that allowed Hitler to get in, but this London shows that it's unfounded fear that allowed Norsefire to evolve from the Conservative party. This totalitariast party fuels the fear fire with hints about disease pandemics, CCTV, media manipulation, religious hypocrosy, foreign threats, terrorism, internet surveillance, torture, intelligence gathering, profiling. Hmmm. Sounds familiar.

Call it serendipitous, but the reason this film has got under my skin this week is because I also watched 'Inside the Commons' which exposed the Palace of Westminster as a juvenile public school club where policy and public interest is second to antiquated traditions and subsidised drinking. Almost prophetic then that the director James McTeigue stated the film "really showed what can happen when society is ruled by government, rather than the government being run as a voice of the people."

Now... where's that pitchfork?

Drive

Oh my goodness me. It's been a long year away from blogging all things cinema - I blame a change of career and new life as an NQT.

So, let's start with one of my favourite films from the past couple of years - Drive.

Killer soundtrack 

Not just because of the ever so lovely, (everyone has a crush - yes, straight men too), Ryan Gosling, and not because of my favourite British actress, the understated Carey Mulligan. No, because it has been one of the few films in recent months which has hung about in my head - always a good sign.

First off its a cracking genre film, starting with that amazing hot pink choice of font which slashes boldly across the opening credits. Perhaps a metaphor for the way the violence in the film suddenly jumps out at you and smacks you across the face. Literally. And wow. I was not expecting that.

The scene in the lift is breath taking, not just for gosling getting those MTV award winning lips out to kiss Carey. No, just because you are not expecting it at all, and you really don't expect the way it continues. Oh right, you're kicking the guy... And now you're kicking in s head, and now his head is mush.... Oh my.

But as genre film it's an interesting metaphor, a kind of modern day fairy tale. Gosling is the hero, kitted out in white shining satin (armour) chasing the princess who needs rescuing. The problem is, The Driver, as he's only ever know, is stuck in a fantasy story of his own, one warped by his day job. I think the driver seems himself as a kind of knight, he's ultimately fighting to protect innocence at any cost. But just like a knight in a fairy tale the reality is warped. There isnt going to be a happyily ever after, as Mulligan's face confirms at ate end of the lift scene. The driver lives in a fantasy and his actions play out to prove this. Why else would he wear the mask to kill the evil Niño?

That scene at the beach stuck in my head for ages. Why does he go to the restaurant and look in the window wearing the mask? Why does he leave the car perched on the top of the cliff with the list shining? Why does he stalk the  dying Niño into the waters? I think because his mind as been lost - he cannot distinguish between what is real and what is a movie and by wearing the mask from his stunt scene, he literally becomes a superhero. He feels invincible. He is removed from his identity. The bad guy dies - the good girl lives - and he's at the centre of the action.

I love the detail of this film too. That statin jacket! What a great touch, like a suit of armour in a fairy tale it shines out thought the dark streets of LA, and like armour, through the film it becomes muddied with the evidence of battle. He never cleans it, it becomes a badge of honour. 

Also I like any director who hires Christina Hendricks to then blow her head up 10 minutes after she appears on screen. It seems like a waste, but then again, that's one point of the film: there's so much violence that we've resorted to treating it casually.