Change Your Image
mike-murphy-2
Reviews
Juno (2007)
The best movie I've seen in a long time
"Juno" is about many things: love, need, integrity, commitment, family, parenthood, sex, oh and a tiny 16 year old girl who finds herself pregnant in small town America.
If Ken Loach had made this kind of movie, I'd have been slitting my wrists by the 22nd minute, consumed with angst and the inevitable bleakness of the human condition.
But this is written by a woman who christened herself Diablo Cody and who manages her image like a Letterman monologue (she worked as stripper in preference to her job at an ad agency and has two wonderful quotes about writing and writers: Stripping toughened my hide, but exposing myself as a writer has been a lot more brutal.
I have never been an ambitious person, and my participation in this industry is a fluke, but only male writers can afford to be coy and self-deprecating.) so it is hip without being glib and optimistic without being candy-coated.
Just reading the script for this movie would have lightened my heart and stretched my smile but the movie adds indie music, cool animation, perfect timing, and an ensemble cast that take no prisoners.
And then there's Ellen Page. I'm more than a little in love with Ellen Page. She knows how to sell an emotion with small changes to her facial expression but she never seems to let technique get in the way of emotional honesty. Page is small, with a large head and a wide mouth and eyes that take in the whole world. She looks 16 (she was 20 when the movie was made) and, although she is brave and independent and almost compulsively witty, she carries across that only-partly-formed-and-still-very-vulnerable state that makes being a teenager so emotion soaked.
I first saw her last year in "Hard Candy" where she plays a 14 year old who thinks she encountered a internet predator and sets out to deal with him. I switched the movie off, not because it was bad but because it was so raw I couldn't cope with it.
I hope the movies does well at the Oscars. I wish Cody Diablo well with her up and coming "United States of Tara" series and I am absolutely certain that I will see every film that Elen Page takes part in.
The Brave One (2007)
Original, uncompromising, distressing and compelling
Everything in this movie works - together and alone. The plot twists and turns, binding your emotions tighter and tighter. The script has language chosen with care and precision. The photography is uncompromisingly intimate.Every scene is the right length - the editing keeps you moving forward without rushing past the emotional challenges.
But the anchor of this movie is Jodie Foster's performance. She is brave, holding nothing back, generating the honesty that defines this movie.
Terrence Howard supports Jodie Foster perfectly - reflecting her honesty and her passion and generating a rapport that you can almost touch.
It's been a month now since I left the cinema, emotionally drained but deeply satisfied by this movie, and it remains fresh in my memory, ready to be returned to and looked at again and understood more deeply.
On my "must buy the DVD" list.
Cassandra's Dream (2007)
Disappointing. Not worth watching.
I'm a big fan of Woody Allen's work and I've enjoyed seeing him move into writing and directing movies he doesn't act in. "Match Point" was intriguing, compelling, original and memorable. "Scoop" was clever and funny. Woody Allen writes well, picks talented actors and gets the best from them usually.
This movie has a good plot a little heavy-handedly linked to Greek Tragedy but that's not unusual for Woody Allen some talented actors (although choosing and Irishman and a Scot to play two Londoner brothers produced some distracting accents) and some strong dialogue.
The problem is that this great potential evaporates through poor execution.
Ewan McGregor practically sleepwalks his way through this role, delivering his lines with all the charisma of a member of a Greek Chorus.
The score, typically a strong point in Woody Allen's movies is thin and Philip Glass' music does nothing to support the emotional content of the scenes.
Although Colin Farrell puts energy into his role and is convincing as a not so bright man blown around by fate and destroyed by guilt, he never quite manages an English accent and the rapport between him and his brother (Mc Gregor) is patchy at best.
The editing of the movies has done it no favours: The scenes are stitched-together set-pieces which rob the movie of momentum and emotional impact.
I've never before watched a Woody Allen movie where my main reaction has been, "how could he not know how bad this is?"
Slingshot (2005)
Lost in the edit
This should have been a moody, gritty, movie which lingered in the memory as an exposition of relationship where the dominant personality only survives because the personality being dominated sees no hope of change.
The acting was intense and skillful, the dialogue worked but the movie was irritatingly ineffective: too many distance shots that suggested lack of focus rather than a broader picture. Poor flow. The first 5 minutes could have been missed out altogether.
I suspect that, with a different edit, this movie could have been compelling.
In its current form it is flat, formless and tremendously disappointing.