His name is Judge Michel Racine, but they call him Judge Double Digits because if he puts you away for less than ten years, count yourself lucky. He is stern and serious, and at the start of his next case, he’s cranky because he’s caught the flu. On the bright side, he is in love with one of the jurors, so he might feel merciful today.
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Beggars and Believers in Brussels
I wanted to start this review for The Brand New Testament with the words “God exists. He lives in Brussels and is a nuisance to his wife and daughter and every living thing,” but the movie poster beat me to it. God also creates Brussels in those first few minutes titled Genesis, finds it wanting and creates humans just to amuse himself by conjuring up laws such as the one about how your phone starts ringing just as you’ve started to soak in your bubble bath. It’s a comedy, but it has serious undertones, and not just religious ones. Continue reading
Would that it were so simple.
Hail, Caesar! is the Coen brothers’ most positive comedy. I admit that I was prompted to think there would be a fair amount of political abuse because of the trailer for Trumbo they showed beforehand, but no-one gets really hurt in the feature. The worst that happens is that Hollywood superstar Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) is abducted from the set of his biblical epic by a group of Communist screenwriters who call themselves The Future. Theirs is the friendliest abduction in movie history, which is surprising because the movie is set in the late 1950s. They cannot bring themselves round to telling Whitlock that he has been abducted, but fill his thick head with talk of production and economics and the value of the little guy and that with his studio’s money, they could support the cause. Gentle old Dr. Marcuse (John Bluthal) tells him about the end of history. Whitlock doesn’t get any of it, but he likes it there in that beach villa, reclining in his deck chair, cigarette and martini in hand, still in his Centurion’s uniform. Continue reading
Twin sons, one mother or another
Although Goodnight Mommy is not rich in jump scares, it is very much a horror flick. Comparisons to Haneke’s earlier work, especially to Funny Games, are in order – the two first-time directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala are Austrian, like Haneke. Veronika Franz is also the co-writer of all of Ulrich Seidl’s screenplays, whose Paradise trilogy I’ve reviewed elsewhere. That should give you a clue as to the movie’s atmosphere, although there is not much of Seidl’s symmetrical rigidity here.
Money is funny. Funny how?
If I had known Adam McKay was the idea man, writer and director behind Will Ferrell vehicles such as the Anchorman movies or Step Brothers or Talladega Nights, or even the writer of Ant-Man, I might have avoided The Big Short. I’m glad I saw it, not least because it covers similar territory as Margin Call. The Big Short is McKay’s first movie as a director without Ferrell, and maybe more serious than his previous work. It’s about the credit and housing finance collapse in 2007. Yes, it’s a comedy about greed, cluelessness, unemployment, financial ruin, indifference and death. It’s not flawless, but it’s witty and fast-paced, and it has an ensemble cast that speaks for itself.
Carol for Christmas
Todd Haynes’ Carol is a great way to end your movie year, or to start the new one. The movie works well on many levels, the most noteworthy of which is that Cate Blanchett’s role as the title character seems to have been written for her. It wasn’t – the movie is based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt from 1952, but I couldn’t see anybody else in that role.
iMac billionaire
It’s rather surprising to realize that Steve Jobs is a Danny Boyle movie. Boyle’s trademark is kinetic energy – his camera wants to move, to jump, pan and zoom and sometimes go wild (remember how Trainspotting hit the ground running all those years ago?). His biopic Steve Jobs, however, shows you two hours’ worth of talking heads. That is what you get when the screenplay is by Aaron Sorkin.
A lot of war, a little love
Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan starts with a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam soldier igniting the funeral pyre of his dead comrades. Then the soldier takes off his uniform and tosses it into the flames. He has lost everything – his family, his war. He just wants to get out of the country. So does a woman called Yalini. Because she knows that families have a much better chance of getting out, she is looking for a spare child, preferably an orphan, who will pretend that they are mother and daughter. She finds a nine year-old girl called Illayaal who has lost her family, too. They meet the soldier. The fake family is complete.
How to die
The Farewell Party, or Mita Tova, its original title, is a small miracle. It takes place at a retirement home in Jerusalem, but could happen in many other places. It is about death and euthanasia, but is not a downer. It contains many heartfelt moments, but is often very funny as well. It even has the courage to feature a musical number.
The movie works because none of the cast are over-playing their scenes, and none of the scenes stray too far away from the main story. It starts with Max, who is so ill and in pain that he wants to die. His wife Yana wants his suffering to end. Yehezkel, a friend of theirs, is a bit of an inventor; he invents a small machine out of spare parts like a bicycle chain and a digital readout. Daniel, a former veterinarian, provides the medication. Max presses a button, and within a minute, he is asleep. He won’t wake again.
Yehezkel’s wife Levana is strictly against euthanasia, on moral principles, but also because it’s her husband supervising the procedure. Yehezkel, Yana and Daniel want to keep their machine a secret, but Levana finds out. So do others: they are approached by an old man at Max’ funeral. His wife is very sick, and would they please consider helping her? The movie tackles a few questions with great grace: to what degree is euthanasia moral – or immoral? How much self-determination is there in a dying person’s decision? How about the law? How about Elohim?
The most powerful image is the gang standing in the corner, wearing blue rubber gloves, watching someone press the button. On the other hand, there is gentle fun in some of the scenes. The gang is meeting in the greenhouse at night, chain-smoking and discussing the loved ones they lost to cancer. Their car is stopped by a policeman who wants to book them for speeding, but has to deal with five maudlin and tearful senior citizens all at once. He thinks they just want to avoid the ticket.
The secret of the movie is in its cast: they stay themselves during the death scenes as well as the comedy. It’s refreshing to know that the end of our days can be a comfort. Mita Tova seems to claim that euthanasia is the right thing to do if it is an option at the right time. It’s up to you to determine when and if the right time has come, but think about how it affects others. In both senses of the term, you are not alone. That is a comfort as well as a responsibility.
More attitude, yo.
I wanted to like Straight Outta Compton, but the movie made it hard for me. When the credits rolled, I asked myself why I didn’t like it more. The answer: it’s not angry enough.
To be clear: it’s angry when it absolutely needs to be. There is a scene where a young, disappointed Ice Cube is smashing the gold records and glass furniture of his white record company connection. There are three or even four scenes where the Compton police cuff each and every black guy they see standing on the sidewalk just because they are black and therefore suspicious. The concerts are atmospheric and dense; you don’t need to know any N.W.A. song to realize that these are angry young men. But the rest of the movie is steeped in mild nostalgia instead of a stubborn feeling of resistance or… well, attitude.
Hip-Hop is essentially hate music, in the best sense of the word. It’s about how badly black neighbourhoods are treated, and how that can piss off men who are not musicians, but find a way to play their stuff, which in turn is powered by their anger. It’s smarter and more nuanced than most of heavy metal. Hip-Hop is also hate music in the worst sense of the word because of its rampant sexism. If you think young black males in Compton had it bad, you may be right, but there are always young black females who had it worse. And they didn’t even have a voice until later.
The movie gets the casting right. Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr., playing his real-life dad) and Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell) are immediately recognizable; same goes for Snoop Dogg and Tupac, both in minor roles. Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins) less so; I kept confusing him with the actor playing MC Ren (Aldis Hodge). No matter – the acting is spot-on.
But there are unexplained lapses, mostly due to the screenplay. Consider the scene where Dr. Dre learns that his younger brother Tyree has died. The tour bus stops, and the group gets out onto the sidewalk to mourn his death. It’s a heartfelt scene, but nobody mentions how Tyree has died. Was he killed? What happened? Is that a piece of N.W.A. lore that everybody knows anyway?
On the other hand, if you know a lot about N.W.A., you might get confused during the very first scene where Eazy-E wants to sell his drugs. There is a woman called Tomica pointing a shotgun at him. Tomica is also the name of Eazy-E’s widow. They didn’t have their meet cute on opposite ends of a gun barrel, did they?
There are scenes of undisputed power, too. N.W.A. take a break from recording their debut album and are standing on the sidewalk, eating and talking. Police cruisers pull up and start insulting and harrassing them, forcing them to lie down (note that the officer telling them to do so is black). They don’t get arrested, but return to the studio and write Fuck Tha Police, their most famous track. If it’s not true, then it’s very well invented.
I accept that N.W.A. started a rap band, not a social movement, but some scenes are tinged with an atmosphere of those good old times that jar with the concert clips or the moments when Suge Knight takes his security job way too seriously. Why does their white manager (Paul Giamatti) start to cry when confronted with syphoning off money? Why isn’t mysogyny adressed properly? Eazy-E died of Aids, after all, caused by his womanizing. If you’re doing a biopic of the most dangerous group in the world, you need to go out there and let at least some of that shine through.
