The Counsellor

I will start this review by saying that this is quite simply one of the most uncomfortable and unsettling film I have ever seen, taking its place alongside Oldboy and Blue Velvet. Like those films, it has moments of brutal violence carried out by people completely aware of what they are doing. Violence however, is simply the tip of the iceberg with The Counsellor. This film is an eighteen for a reason.

Written by one of the greatest living novelists, Cormac McCarthy and directed one of the best directors working today, Ridley Scott. The Counsellor follows an American counsellor as he gets involved in a drug deal, hoping to make a lot of money in a one time deal. I’ll avoid spoilers, but as you can imagine, his best laid plans soon unravel.

Where else to start with than the writing and the screenplay. You are dropped right into the middle of this world of drug dealers, corrupt middle men and assassins. There is little to no set up of the main story or its central characters. You are told to keep up and forced through this relentless terrifying descent into genuine horror.

The dialogue is beautiful throughout, although it does depend on the actor to see just how good it is, and  it is unlike anything you are likely to hear in a film this year. The monologues, which there are a few of, can be distracting and slow down the film at times, purely because they force you to really listen to words and understand the gravity and emotion behind each of them. One phone call is particularly hard to sit through, solely because of the actions and consequences which have led to this moment and the event to follow.

The plot is relatively simple to follow, but because we don’t come in at the start, you have to put together the pieces as the clues are drip fed to you. Although it’s nice to not be swamped with exposition, I can’t help but think that a few lines here and there would have gone a long way to making this more accessible.

The cast for this film is impressive, to say the least. Led by the stellar Michael Fassbender, whose arrogant law man starts off with the world at his feet and feeling untouchable before the inevitable and subtly delivered fall starts. Fassbender handles the unique dialogue well, giving the elaborate sentences and monologues a human feel, bringing substance to the style.

Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem fill out the supporting male roles. As with Fassbender, they handle the dialogue with a smooth and confident air, letting the words flow out. But it is their characters facial expressions which really bring them to life. Pitts final scene is powerful and echoes words and advice he told to the counsellor at the start of the film. Bardems greatest moment is in a flash back, as he tells of a night with Malkina (Cameron Diaz) on a golf course. I won’t give away details, but he holds a look that encompasses fear, confusion and a little bit of disgust throughout it all.

Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz, who play the two main female characters, fair in varying degrees with the dialogue, but both succeed with the silent moments. Like their male counterparts, they bring them to life with the simple gestures, smiles, glances or the wrinkle of a brow. It’s hard to go into details about these two, as a lot of their best moments come late on and would give away some key moments.

Visually this film is superb, as you would come to expect from any Ridley Scott film, set mostly in the desert, Scott and Dariusz Wolski make each barren landscape a pleasure to look at. Even when you know you shouldn’t, or don’t want to. Decapitations and automobile based sexual interactions have never been so beautifully shot.

The Counsellor will worry you, confuse you, entertain you and scare you. Some will love it, others will hate it. But you won’t find another film like it anywhere.

Just be warned, it is certainly not for the squeamish.

Gravity

It’s been a long wait for Alfonso Cuaron’s follow up to Children of Men, one of the great dystopian films of the last twenty years. With Gravity, Cuaron has returned with both his attention to detail and elegant use of long shots.

The story of Gravity is straight forward, taking a lot from the survival genre, as we initially follow the crew of Explorer as they attach scientific equipment to a satellite. This changes when a freak accident causes countless pieces of debris to rip through the shuttle and the satellite, effectively leaving them dead in the water, or space. What follows is a desperate race to get to the next satellite or space station that can sustain the team till the debris comes round again.

That pretty much covers all you need to know about Gravity in terms of plot, it is happy to keep it simple and instead focus on the visuals and it’s characters, arguably the films weakness.

But it would be wrong to start anywhere else with Gravity than the quite frankly stunning visuals. Yes, large amounts of it are made up of CGI shots, but this is CGI on another level, it looks real but at the same time never distracts from the rest of the film, something that often ruins CGI heavy films.

The other great visual joy is the use of long takes. The first shot of the film is roughly 15 minutes long. This shot isn’t just of a conversation, or a simple tracking shot of a single character. It shows us the Earth, the main characters as they work on a moving satellite, then follows each of them during the debris storm. It’s worth going to see this film for the opening shot alone.

Now, lets move onto the two characters in this film, Stone and Kowalski, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Bar a few radio voices, these are the only two people you are going to follow for the film.

Bullock is arguably the lead in Gravity, as it her past that is focused on more and she is one that has any sort of character arc. As she fights to survive, we slowly have more and more information drip fed to us about what happened to her back on Earth. Bullock does her best with a somewhat basic script, there is very little character work, in part that is down to the events that follow the debris storm. It would have been interesting for her to have been given something meatier to work with and really build out Stone.

Clooney is as charming and funny as you would expect from him, he is the veteran up there and as a result the part plays to his strengths. His knowledge and experience earns him the right to be so relaxed up there. Clooney builds his character quickly, thanks to some stories he shares with Houston as they are working on the satellite, something like this would have greatly helped Bullocks character.

In Alien, the tag line was ‘In space no one can hear you scream’, and thanks to Gravity, sticking to this scientific fact, you get some really unsettling and discomforting sequences, especially during the action set pieces, when chaos is breaking out visually, but we can’t hear anything except the voices of the astronauts.

I had heard great things about Gravity, going into the cinema, even that it would change cinema. While I enjoyed the film, it did fall a little short of the hype that preceded it. This obviously, isn’t the fault of the film, critics will say what they want and it is easy to be taken in by the hyperbole that has come out of the film.

Gravity is a technically stunning film that will pull people in, but will ultimately divide.

Thor: The Dark World

The first Thor was, and still is may favourite Marvel Studios film, as it didn’t stick to their usual structure and handling of the villain. Instead of focusing on the action, of which there is a lot, it was more interested in the family dynamic of the main characters, Especially the relationship between Thor and Loki, something that would go on to be the best part of The Avengers.

The plot for Thor: The Dark World is fairly straight forward, a race that existed before the creation of the nine realms, the Dark Elves have returned seeking a power source known as the Aether, something that if controlled by their leader Malekith, will return the universe to darkness. This Aether has been locked away for thousands of years, but when Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) stumbles through into another realm and comes across it, she alerts Malekith to where it is. From there on, Thor must return to Earth, protect Jane and stop Malekith.

The films greatest strength, as with the first one is in the interplay between Thor and Loki, played by  Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth superbly. Their chemistry is so good and believable that they feel like brothers. Their first scene in the film together is where the film as a whole starts to pick up. Whether one is better in their respective role compared to the other is beside the point. 

They embrace the characters and make them their own, something that often seals the fate of any comic book film. Without one, this series wouldn’t be anywhere near as successful or interesting as it is.

As with any good comic book film you need a good  villain, someone you can really hate and with Loki being given a very grey area in this film it falls on Malekith to carry the threat. Unfortunately, he rarely does anything to warrant hatred, in fact you will probably barely manage more than casual dislike for him. In all, he kills about five people that I can remember and they are faceless warriors in the prologue.

His hench-elves do the majority of the shooting and stabbing. Christopher Eccleston is not bad in the role, in fact a lesser actor would have barely left an impression, but he certainly could have done with more screen time than he got to make the character more detestable or have him try and justify what he is doing. While not necessary for all villains, this crusade needed some sort of reasoning.

For a film about gods and the end of light in the universe, the action is somewhat downplayed at times, again similar to the first. But here, I really wanted it to go big, especially during an attack on a certain city and the climax of the film. The two major set pieces of the film.  Both sequences have good beginnings and good ends, but not that something special. By these points we are invested in the characters and have just been treated to some excellent characters moments. 

There is no grand moment in these sequences, no truck flip (The Dark Knight) or fight on top of the train (Spider-Man 2) to make the memorable. Where Man of Steel received complaints for the level of destruction and length of its final battle, Thor: The Dark World should be criticized for not going big enough.

By no means is this a negative review of the film, I enjoyed it a lot and would recommend it to anyone looking for a fun film to go and see. It slips into the upper echelon of Marvel films with ease.

Go to this film for the performances, specifically Hemsworth, Hiddleston and Hopkins, it’s their relationships and family politics that make this film as good as it is.

It looks like the red capes are doing okay this year.

Captain Phillips

I missed the real life events of this film as they played out. I remember the general story, but this particular event got muddled in with a host of other similar hostage situations so I couldn’t recall what had happened when the first trailer came out. As a result I can’t be sure how much of it is accurate and how much was changed to make the film more entertaining, in a harrowing and nerve shredding entertaining kind of way.

The story is fairly straight forward as it follows the hijacking of a cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, off the coast of Somalia by pirates. As this is a true story it is hard to judge what is a spoiler and what isn’t, but I will keep spoilers to a minimum as it was how I went into the film and it increased my enjoyment of the film.

This is easily one of Tom Hanks’ best performances in years and could quite easily earn him a nomination for Best Actor, if not the award when the envelope is opened. At first, Phillips isn’t completely likeable, he is gruff and demanding, clearly not well liked by his crew, but respected. It is when the pirates come that we see this part of his character break and we get a man who is doing his best to hold on, keep calm and protect his crew.

The greatest moments of the performance come in the lifeboat, where the majority of the second half takes place. As the tension inside begins to wrap up, Hanks really makes us see the desperation and the feel the hope slipping away scene by scene. You should be as scared as he is and he makes you feel every bit.

The camera in Captain Phillips is always moving, as in any Paul Greengrass film, for some this is an issue, purely because of their own tastes and preferences. With the exception of the early calm(er) section of the film, where I can see the argument that the camerawork is distracting, once we board the Alabama the camerawork gradually begins to reflect the situation and state of mind of those it’s looking at. During the hijacking, it is everywhere, moving quickly to take in everything that is happening. During the lifeboat scenes, it is up close and moving erratically as everyone struggles to retain not just their cool, but their sanity. Where as aboard the US Navy Ships, everything is steady and calm, despite the clear high stakes of a US citizen being taken hostage and slowly getting closer to the Somali coast.

The second lead performance of the film belongs to the leader of the pirates, Muse, played by Barkhad Abdi. He is at times equally utterly terrifying and strangely vulnerable as the pressure of the situation and the expectations of his people mount up. Like Hanks’ performances, the best moments come in the lifeboat as he has to deal with the US Navy, Phillips and his own crew starting to crack as their chances of success very quickly disappear.

Often a film will be described as nerve shredding, tense, etc, but never really gets to the heights you are thinking of. Captain Phillips is not one of those films, it goes off the normal scale of tense, this isn’t turned up to 11, it’s turned up to 100. I barely heard anyone in the cinema say a word throughout the entire run time, ever single person was engrossed. By the time the climax starts to ramp up, you are so focused on the events on the screen that any knowledge of what actually happened completely escapes your mind.

The easiest way I can describe how invested I was, is with something I noticed when I left the cinema. Normally when I get tense I pick at my beard, just clipping the end of hairs or pulling them out. In the light I saw that I had pretty much covered the top of my shirt with small bits of hair that I had picked.

. So basically, stop reading this review, right now. Get in your car, bus or boat and go to the nearest cinema and watch it 

Rush

I’m no racing fan of any kind, never have and all likelihood never will be, so my knowledge of F1 and its long history is very basic. The only time I have managed to follow a season was the end of the 2008 season and start of 2009 season during my time at University, which was down to my flat mate being a big fan and a regular watcher. So what I’m trying to say is. If I make a mistake with a technical term/name or have interpreted something incorrectly, it’s because I just don’t know.

Rush is set in the late 70’s through to 1986 and follows the rise of drivers, and eventual rivals James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) from Formula 3 up to the Formula 1. I’ll avoid spoilers much as I can, as I went into this film with very limited knowledge of these two men or their stories. Along the way we see how their similar privileged upbringings produced two very different men. One who was very loose and was willing to take risks in every aspect of his life and the other who was scientific and methodical in his.

The way this film is structured and plays out is very unlike most historical or biographical films, so much as it focuses on a relatively small portion of time and even then passes skips years to get us to the crucial and iconic season.

It also doesn’t focus specifically on either man, instead it jumps back and forth in sections from one to the other. The early focus is on Hunt, which sets the film up to be solely about him, before cutting to Lauda’s rise. Both are handled well and give us enough information and time with the characters so that when the big races come around we are invested in them both. Making you choose in effect who you want to see win each race.

Both performances are good, Hemsworth gives us a charming and likeable man who can seemingly do whatever he wants, can have any woman and has the support of rich friends. The good times are entertaining, but it is when his life starts to spiral downwards that Hemsworth gives us the more interesting side of the character. Dealing with excessive drinking and the break up of a marriage while trying to do his job.

Bruhls performance is oddly the more flashy and more likely to get recognition come awards season. There are more ticks and mannerisms to this performance than Hemsworths, and maybe that is accurate of the man himself. This is by no means is a criticism, as at times Lauda’s tinkering with cars and blunt comments are a enjoyable to watch as Hunts antics. Bruhls best moments come from the crash and beyond. The pain and obsession all feels real as he desperately tries to recover from a frankly horrific accident.

The biggest star of the film and the thing that kept me engrossed the most was the look and sound of the film. Never has the noise of gear changes, tires and engine movements sounded more exciting or captivating. I hope the cinema you see it in has their sound system as high as the one I saw it, other wise you would genuinely miss out and one the biggest and best parts of this film.

Rush is definitely a stand out film, especially considering the amount of films that are being released now. The awards seasons is starting to gear up, as is the horror surge we usually get in October and November. Don’t be put off by the racing elements of the story, go and enjoy an interesting movie.

Prisoners

A film about child abduction is hardly the most appealing of subject matters, as no matter how it is handled, there will always be something of an uncomfortable feeling about enjoying it, considering the real life consequences of this kind of situation. But whether or not this, or any other topic or subject matter is considered taboo or off limits, is something that should be decided by the individual and not a studio or focus group.

Prisoners, as mentioned earlier is about the abduction of two young girls from two families and what they do following the event. Each family reacts in different ways, which is shown through the actions of each father, one is proactive and tries to do everything he can while the other is passive and hopes that the police will find the girls. The other main character is the police detective who is tasked with finding the missing girls.

Prisoners did remind me of a few films of recent years, not necessarily in terms of plot or characters, but more in its tone and its structure. At times it doesn’t play by the normal rules of a thriller, it down plays its big thrills and doesn’t use music to build tension, instead it relies on its performances, in much of the same way that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or Zero Dark Thirty did.

Tonally, it is a call back to some of David Finchers most recent films in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Zodiac, as there is a omnipresent sense of dread and hopelessness as the situation and weight of the characters choices bare down on them.

As I touched on earlier, this is a film driven by performances, and two in particular. Hugh Jackman as Keller, one of the fathers who has lost their daughter, and Detective Loki, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Where most actors would choose to go big whenever they could, these two choose to tone it down and play it in a much more restrained and natural way.

While Jackman plays the emotional core of the film, as he struggles with the desperation to get his daughter back and come to terms with what he is willing to do to get her back. It is Loki who is by far the most interesting character we meet. Very much a loner who has the respect of his superiors and colleagues, but isn’t liked by them, it’s as though he needs to keep up his 100% record to validate himself and be able to fight his corner.

In his conversations with Jackman, which are the strongest of the film as you may expect, he offers the bare amount of sympathy he has to at the beginning, which then quickly deteriorates as the family start to interfere in his investigation and hinder his work. He fights back a desire to truly berate Keller on numerous occasion’s, it is a struggle that is rarely seen in crime films.

There are a few loose ends at the end of the film, I won’t go into detail, that  in a way undermine the brutal natural of the previous two hours as some consequences are ignored, while others are brought to the fore front. The one that is pushed to the front, in actuality needs to be pushed on the audience as they are asked to make their own conclusions about should happen to a certain character and if their actions are right, wrong or at least justifiable.

When awards season roles around I hope there is at least one category with someone from Prisoners in it. If I were to put money on it, it would be Jake Gyllenhaal in a supporting role.

It is a difficult subject matter to deal with, but one that is worth your time for questions it poses and that it offers up a mature adult based thriller, something we don’t get as often as we should. Whether it pushes the subject matter to far, or not far enough is up to you.

If a story about children being kidnapped doesn’t put you off immediately, then go and see this great film.

Mud

A Blu-ray review this time, but one of a film that came out this year and is well worth your money.

Mud is Jeff Nichols third film, after 2007’s Shotgun Stories and the amazing Take Shelter from 2011. Having only seen Take Shelter, I can’t fully comment on his evolution as a filmmaker, but looking at the quality of those two films, Nichols will likely continue to go from strength to strength as both a writer and a director.

The plot and story of Mud is fairly simple, but there is one of the films great strengths, it doesn’t try and fill up its run time with a complicated story.

Instead it focuses on the relationships between the characters. When two 14-year-old boys, Ellis and Neckbone find a boat stuck in a tree on an island on the Mississippi river (I assume this is right river), the boys claim it for themselves.

However, also sharing the island with the boat is Mud (Matthew McConaughey), he tells the boys that he is waiting for someone and needs their help to get the boat running, which he too has claimed as his own. Making a deal with the boys, they bring him food, parts and take messages for him to people in town.

The person Mud is waiting for is his girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), this isn’t a spoiler as it is revealed early on in the film, the reason for them not being together is something too interesting to give away here, as I wouldn’t do it justice.

As mentioned before, this a film about performances and the standouts are the two boys, Tye Sheridan as Ellie and Jacob Lofland as Neckbone. The biggest compliment that you can pay them is that they genuinely feel like they have been friends for years and have a short hand when they are around each other, not having to speak to one another. Ellis has more screen time, as we also get a subplot about his parents’ potential divorce.

Sheridan plays his character as a boy looking for a real father figure and growing up without any real guidance, the only person he can really speak to is Neckbone and then Mud. He places so much faith in the idea of love being strong enough to keep two people together that it should never be given up on, that when a relationship he has begins to have troubles, the confused pain that creeps over his face is painful to watch as similarities with the other relationships in the film finally hit home for him.

Neckbone is a rougher character and more comic, especially with his cutting little remarks and delivery of the lines he is given. The best is when he refers to his Uncle keeping him out of their house while he has sex with someone. Around Mud, he plays it much more cautiously, wary of Mud and what he is telling them. But he is loyal to Ellis and helps him whenever he needs it, never questioning it, just attacking it with a determined steeliness.

Mud, the main character is someone who speaks through stories and by telling people things that they want to here. This is no doubt how he has come so far on the limited resources he had. McConaughey plays him with a disconnected air, unaware of what is going on not only around him, but in the world at large, focused only on getting his boat fixed and his girl. Everything else is secondary.

It is a subdued and natural performance that really gets you to invest in the character, so that when the action kicks off in the last fifteen minutes you care about him. Maybe that is the performance’s greatest achievement, he is able to make you sympathize with what could be seen as a liar and a dangerous man.

The camera work is beautiful, as it swaps from long takes of the river to journeys through the town, either in the back of a truck or on a hand made motorcycle. Each shot is a work of art, and reminds me of Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, where every shot looks and feels like a painting, each one perfectly framed, lit and realised. If the rest of the film wasn’t as good as it is, it still is worth seeing for its cinematography alone.

Jeff Nichols has crafted his best film so far and one that should receive attention come the awards at the end of the year. But unfortunately, will sadly be overlooked in all honesty. Make sure you don’t make the same mistake.

To put it simply, this is the best film I have seen this year.