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Rush (2013)
Rush: Bringing Formula 1 To Your Seat
Rush is such a pleasant surprise!
I have never much cared about Ron Howard's intent and style as film director, yet admire his ability to zero into what sells now - whenever now is - in Movieland. His populist touch once made me thoroughly dislike A Beautiful Mind (2001), a film that has everything in it for me to love and was deluged with awards. Cryptography, mental illness and Russell Crowe as John Nash seemed a perfect match, but a tendency to ease the audience's experience by spelling out the future drove me away. That tendency still exists. In less subtle territories such as Apollo 13 (1995), Ron Howard really does himself justice. And in Rush where sports history serves as guide, kudos to him for straying from philosophical considerations and going for pulsating material, hand-held camera first.
Formula 1, a compelling rivalry, 70's glamour and serious speed with Thor/Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl at the wheels cannot fail. In principle, that's what Rush is. However, in the hands of Peter Morgan who wrote The Queen and the adapted screenplay for The Last King of Scotland, something incredible happens: the perfect Saturday date night movie scripted as if the author personally knew James Hunt and Niki Lauda when they put everything on the line in 1976.
Rush is the closest most of us will ever come to driving a Formula 1 race-car. It excels at giving the audience a genuine sense of the speed such finely engineered machines generate and the relative lack of protection they offer. The polarity of James Hunt's gregarious rock 'n' roll persona played by a charismatic Chris Hemsworth with Brühl's technically brilliant but emotionally remote Niki Lauda, eventually feels more like a duality. Both these extreme athletes from before the X Games era may have had more in common than they probably ever acknowledged.
In 2013, they are revisited by two actors who for disappearing into their respective roles could find themselves sharing centre stage with Ron Howard and Peter Morgan in March 2014. I would not be surprised for Julian Day's costume design to receive an Academy Award nomination too. Frida Giannini's period-evoking looks for Chris Hemsworth and Olivia Wilde (Suzy Miller) are so in tune to the glamour of the times they represent, they are desirable now. Rush is a beautiful movie to watch and Gucci can expect a stampede for several bespoke items. I wish product placement was always this subtle!
Like the absorbing Senna (2010) by Asif Kapadia, Rush does not require in-depth Formula 1 knowledge. One is a meticulously crafted audiovisual memoir in documentary form and the other is a cool action flick for a cosy night spent in good company. The journey starts with Rush.
Pionér (2013)
Watch Insomnia on DVD and Wait for Gravity
I caught Pioneer, an oil rush thriller set in the early eighties, at the London Film Festival. It was featured as part of 'Thrill' and promised to keep me "on the edge of my seat". The backers, Friland Produksjon, are also responsible for the critically acclaimed Headhunters adapted from Jo Nesbø's novel of the same name and Erik Skjoldbjærg directed the original Insomnia in 1997. What's more, one of Scandinavia's foremost actors and the star of Headhunters, Aksel Hennie, plays Petter, a professional deep-sea diver on a dangerous quest 500 meters down the North Sea. Air composed the soundtrack, Wes Bentley plays a shady character, Norway has glorious scenery and someone dies. 106 minutes would fly by.
Pioneer is that rare hybrid: an old school contemporary Norwegian film. The action takes place more than 30 years ago and the cinematography revisits the look and feel of classic late seventies thrillers to depict tensions between oil companies and state government. Here however, an over-reliance on grainy footage, amber and blue filters dims what could have been a series of eerie underwater voyages, as well as unfortunately, any real suspense. Instead it gives the audience a sensation akin to the claustrophobia of Das Boot without the sense of dread that pervaded it. Pioneer's omnipresent soundtrack creates an even greater disconnect where Das Boot had us trapped with a sombre Jürgen Prochnow inside a silent submarine during World War II.
The premise is excellent. It centers on the discovery of large resources of oil and gas at the bottom of the frozen North Sea. We are at the very beginning of the Norwegian Oil Boom which resulted in Norway's prosperity and high standard of living. Petter and Knut (André Eriksen) are brothers and colleagues involved in government-funded petroleum explorations and highly dangerous diving tests conducted in the great depths of the North Sea to establish whether pipelines can be installed. Just as we get to know the main characters, tragedy strikes. A compelling actor in whose performance there was barely enough time to get invested is gone too soon.
Pioneer is a well-intended production which had to make difficult stylistic choices to stretch a Scandinavian budget over expensive action scenes. It tries to be too many things at once and falls short of carrying significance beyond what is seen. Wes Bentley, so good in American Beauty, is confined to a redundant secondary role devoid of genuine purpose. He walks around looking sinister and utters a few English words here and there. Ironically, the dialog lacks depth. Clichés, particularly in the depiction of gender relations, often stand for character development. Obvious symbolism such as bodies of water representing femininity and a full moon to signal rebirth do not challenge the audience much.
Erik Skjoldbjærg said he was "heavily influenced by The Conversation, Chinatown and All The President's Men" in his desire to revive the seventies conspiracy thriller. I wish he had also named the older 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick and exploited more of the dramatic Norwegian coast to better contrast deep sea-diving drama with conflicting human interests above ground.
My verdict? Watch Insomnia on DVD and wait for Gravity.
The Armstrong Lie (2013)
The Armstrong Lie: An Essential Document of One of Cycling's Darkest Eras
It is an unexpected honor to be the first reviewer of The Armstrong Lie.
Yesterday, I went to the London Film Festival and saw The Armstrong Lie directed by Alex Gibney. When it comes to documentaries, a world- renowned film festival is the perfect venue. There's nothing quite like a roomful of film critics, cycling writers and enthusiasts being given the opportunity to ask questions directly to a film director who had unprecedented access to his subject.
Alex Gibney is firmly established among the very elite of documentary filmmakers. He is responsible for Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (2012), Enron: The Smartest Guys In the Room (2005) and Catching Hell (2011) for ESPN's 30 for 30 series which are among some of my favorites of the genre. He also won an Academy Award for Taxi to the Dark Side (2007). Having already investigated scapegoating and bullying via a frightening episode in baseball's history when a fan interfered with a foul ball during Game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series at Wrigley Field, he was well prepared to deal with Lance Armstrong from deification, to dirty politics and the long purgatory faced by some of sport's fallen heroes.
The Armstrong Lie, Mr. Gibney told us, was five years in the making. Lance Armstrong's return to competitive cycling in 2009 culminating with his first Tour de France in four years - after winning seven between 1999 and 2005 - was the original theme. The storyline begged for a Hollywood ending and it was hard not to root for it.
Instead, we saw what needed to be done to rescue Alex Gibney's project once Lance Armstrong lost the power to intimidate whistle-blowers and trample journalists. His return from retirement suddenly looked more like that of Roger Clemens than Michael Jordan. This makes The Armstrong Lie a somewhat bipolar movie stretched between the myth we embraced and Lance Armstrong's unblinking manufacturing of the truth. It is also a vivid summary of the conflicting interests within cycling from the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) which appears to have more in common with the financial sector than clean sport, to its ongoing disputes with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).
What The Armstrong Lie does exceedingly well is show the 'Armstrong Cover-up'. To anyone who has read about systematic doping within cycling, it is about much more than a two-faced one-time ambassador-at- large of the sport. Johan Bruyneel - a former Director of the US Postal Service team and until recently, of the RadioShack team - does not stand to gain from the added exposure this film gives him when for example he is shown attempting to influence a key race result. There is nothing in the Armstrong Lie that will be new to anyone who has followed the sport with passion. Still it remains an important film and I am thankful it was completed. One day, we may come to view it as an essential document of one of cycling's darkest eras.
It is also enlightening to contrast Lance Armstrong's interview by Oprah Winfrey with new material to decide for ourselves on the depth of duplicity involved, the predicament faced by anyone whose talent happens to be riding a bike for 3 weeks over total distances exceeding 3,000 kilometers, and whether it is an easy decision to fight an entire peer group and lose one's income.
The Armstrong Lie emphatically answers 'Why?' when it comes to Lance Armstrong. How someone who almost died from cancer could renew with a dangerous high-stakes game of chemicals remains a mystery. Oprah Winfrey did not directly ask Lance Armstrong that question. Neither does Alex Gibney. Why a number of exceptional athletes appear unconcerned with their own mortality is left for us to ponder on. The speculation that doping could have caused Lance Armstrong's cancer in the first place is not discussed. The Armstrong Lie follows the money. Lots of it.
A member of the audience asked Alex Gibney if Lance Armstrong had seen the movie and if so, what he thought of it. We were told that he does not like the title.
Blue Jasmine (2013)
Woody Allen Celebrates Cate Blanchett In Autumn's Best Film So Far.
48 years after What's New Pussycat? Woody Allen delivers a Fall Classic of his own with his best effort since 1999′s underrated Sweet and Lowdown. From a nostalgic Purple Rose to a disappointing Jade Scorpion, Blue Jasmine represents a new solstice in an exceptional career spent investigating deeply human territory through the often comical depiction of existential, moral and emotional crises.
I absolutely loved it. Here's why...
In Blue Jasmine, we discover a fragrant shade of blue in the form of Cate Blanchett's acting masterclass as Jeanette 'Jasmine' Francis. A consummate 'lady who lunches', Jasmine feeds her blues with Xanax, alcohol and later a dreamboat named Dwight, the tantalizing diplomat played by Peter Sarsgaard.
Blue Jasmine's subtle script demonstrates something thrilling for the twilight years of one of America's greatest film directors: Woody Allen is more relevant than ever and in touch with the times and trials of real people. There is plenty of Tennessee Williams' Blanche DuBois to be found in this Jasmine, but from A Streetcar Named Desire, global and especially micro-economies are re-interpreted for 2013.
With a little imagination, Blue Jasmine can be viewed as a bookend to J.C. Chandor's excellent Margin Call. Woody Allen's Jasmine is a self- obsessed socialite who turns her head away from unpleasantness in a film that looks beyond the tipping point of personal difficulties. The human consequences of deceit, financial and romantic, are explored within every stratum of society by following the fragile quests for happiness of a pseudo Jasmine and her good-hearted half-sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins); two creatures from opposite worlds brought together by Jasmine's husband, Hal, a charismatic fraudster, played with verve by Alec Baldwin.
It is virtually impossible not to respond to this movie and relate to elements of its characters. For the first half, to my mounting horror, I felt a great kinship to Jasmine (minus the prescription drugs and cocktails...).
From a technical standpoint, Javier Aguirresarobe, the director of photography, pursues an intimate dialog begun with Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Blue Jasmine is lit according to the emotion portrayed, as if from within. Flashbacks have a slightly grainy feel to them. There's a remote quality from the characters, from us, from faraway times. Only Augie, Ginger's ex-husband played by a pitch-perfect Andrew Dice Clay - the discovery of this film for me - remains the voice of inconvenient bygones.
Casting is the star of Blue Jasmine. This is not only Cate Blanchett's film, although she is unforgettable in a role which feels written for her. But when is Cate Blanchett not remarkable?
Being a Woody Allen fan is optional when it comes to loving this movie. It is extremely funny at times and Andrew Dice Clay is a joy to watch. Whoever woke up one morning and thought of casting him in a Woody Allen movie deserves high praise for having such crazy dreams. His blue-collar salt-of-the earth Augie is truly heartbreaking.
Autumn's best film so far. Go see it.
Sound City (2013)
Sound City: Dave Grohl's Reel Adventures In Real Music
Last week I discovered the only thing that can make flying coach great: Sound City!
This documentary resonates well beyond music which is why I liked it from second one. It's not about Nirvana or the Foo Fighters. It's about craft and significance: why we do what we do and how we do it. I came for the music and left with an analysis of the creative process from analogue to digital infused through songs. Suddenly I wondered why I wasn't a sound engineer. A great movie often makes you think outside of your own walls and Sound City excels at that. It's also Dave Grohl's first film, which is astonishing since it so artfully twines together multiple cinematographic devices from interviews, hand-held camera work, use of warming and cooling filters, reconstructions, multiple narrators, voice-over, thought bubbles, archival footage, etc. All of which could have resulted in a very confused production in less assured hands.
Little is known about Dave Grohl despite Nirvana and the Foo Fighters. In Sound City, we again see that he really knows how to surrounds himself with rare talents "who have something to say" to borrow Trent Reznor's words. Evidently, he has the charisma to drive everyone to supplement his original idea: telling the story of the Neve console. In the end though, Sound City documents the many lives of a historic recording studio and a feat of engineering, the Neve Console, through the music that came out of them from 1969 to 2011.
Nothing feels forced except perhaps the last 30 minutes when new recordings are made using the Neve console now housed in Dave's Studio 606. The making of Sound City Reel to Real, the film's vaunted soundtrack, could have done with a tighter edit. Trent Reznor explaining his use of technology as an instrument was much more captivating. In mere moments, he reached beyond the surgical precision of ProTools and sterility of Auto-Tune to give modern tools an honest assessment away from the good old days of analogue.
What else is in it for us viewers? Musicians and non-musicians alike will find inspiration in the views exchanged on a studio that produced a crisp sound when its shag carpeted walls should have at best delivered a dirty sound. Sound City by all accounts was the studio equivalent of glorious flora growing from a smelly trash can in a way that no one can fully understand.
If you love music, technology and storytelling, this film will make for a terrific evening. As a bonus, you too may be reminded why Stevie Nicks sure wasn't going to be "the cleaning lady" for long in 'You Can't Fix This'.
Frances Ha (2012)
Greta Gerwig is quietly thrilling as free-spirited Frances Ha.
Frances Ha is the kind of film that lingers long after it's over and follows you home.
In all its loveliness, Frances Ha invites us to question how we live our lives, accept that it's OK to run in circles until we find ourselves; and for the more artistically inclined write our own scripts.
Fresh, crisp, and very French, Frances Ha does not so much inhabit the nostalgic landscape of Woody Allen's Manhattan to which it is widely compared, as look the other way. It openly revisits the French New Wave's palette of François Truffaut's The 400 Blows and the tone of Jean Eustache's meditation on love triangles in The Mother and The Whore.
Little seems to happen to her. 27-year-old girl-next-door tries to make it in Manhattan. Nothing too revolutionary. When we meet Frances, she is a struggling modern dancer who has more in common with Charlie Chaplin's tumbles than Louise Lecavalier's grace.
Frances' life revolves around her best friend Sophie whom she lives with like "an old lesbian couple that doesn't have sex". The day Sophie brightly announces that she is moving in with her boyfriend, everything suddenly comes to a crashing halt. She ends up staying with friends Lev and Benji, barely makes her reduced rent, imagines she is on the verge of success when failure looms and follows her muse on credit. There is a lightness of touch in this entire movie that makes Frances' turmoil a real delight to watch. All actors clearly revel in the material they were given. I almost wished I had been one of them!
Where is the line between love and friendship, possessiveness and possession, art and commerce? Whose side are you on? Greta Gerwig delivers a subtle performance to which love, in the end, is undeniable. Mickey Sumner's Sophie and Michael Zegen's cheerful Benji fill the screen with presence whenever they appear.
Go see Frances Ha for how it will make you feel. Pick a great cinema at a quiet time. And see where it takes you.