6/21/15: Know When To Say When

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Anthony Hopkins, based on a book, based on a true story, British-Dutch films, cinema, Cor van Hout, crime thriller, Daniel Alfredson, David Dencik, drama, film reviews, films, foreign films, Fredrik Bäckar, Håkan Karlsson, Heineken, Heineken beer, held for ransom, Jemima West, Jim Sturgess, Kat Lindsay, kidnapping, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken, large ransoms, Lucas Vidal, Mark van Eeuwen, Movies, Peter R. de Vries, Ryan Kwanten, Sam Worthington, set in 1980s, set in Amsterdam, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, The Girl Who Played With Fire, Thomas Cocquerel, Willem Holleeder, William Brookfield

On paper, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken (2015) must have seemed like a no-brainer: throw Sam Worthington, Jim Sturgess and some fellow named Sir Anthony Hopkins into a film about the real-life kidnapping of the titular beer baron and get the guy who directed the original versions of The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2009) to helm it. Stir, cook at 350 and voila: instant thriller goodness! The resulting film, however, ends up being much less than the sum of its parts: while Kidnapping Mr. Heineken sports a fairly relentless pace, it’s also overly familiar, a little nonsensical and more than a little slight. While the principals all turn in sturdy performances, it’s unlikely that you’ll remember much of it after the credits roll.

Taking place in Amsterdam, in the early ’80s, we’re immediately introduced to our intrepid gang of wannabe kidnappers: Cor van Hout (Jim Sturgess), his best friend, Willem Holleeder (Sam Worthington), “Cat” Boellard (Ryan Kwanten), “Spikes” Meijer (Mark van Eeuwen) and “Brakes” Erkamps (Thomas Cocquerel). When we first meet them, the group is trying to secure a renovation loan for an apartment building that they collectively own, a building which has now been overrun by “squatter punks.” When the loan officer indicates that the building will need to be “cleaned out” before any money can be disbursed, the gang springs into action and goes to kick some punk ass. The point is clear: this is a bunch of dudes who takes matters into their own hands.

On the home-front, Cor and his girlfriend, Sonja (Jemima West), are expecting a baby, which has put quite the financial strain on them. Cor wants to provide for Sonja (who also happens to be Willem’s sister) but there aren’t a lot of options out there for someone who’s done time in the big house. The group comes up with a simple, if outrageous, solution: they decide to kidnap Alfred “Freddy” Heineken (Anthony Hopkins) and hold him for the largest ransom in history…$35 million.

In order to finance their scheme, the gang robs a bank in a daring, daytime heist and uses the money to buy weapons, getaway vehicles and a soundproof, hidden room to hide their abductee. After planning the crime extensively, the group executes their mission without a hitch, grabbing Heineken and his driver (David Dencik) and spiriting them away to their hiding place. Once they actually have their quarry, however, everything begins to unravel: the group begins to fall out among each other, Willem becomes increasingly violent and irrational and Heineken ends up being a canny, sly bastard who pours pretty poison in the ear of anyone he comes in contact with. As the authorities begin to close in, will Cor and the others be able to reap their “rewards” or will grabbing Heineken prove to be the stupidest (and last) thing any of them will ever do?

Technically, all of the moving parts in Kidnapping Mr. Heineken do what they’re supposed to do: the cinematography is crisp and polished (Bäckar was also a cameraman on the American remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)), all of the action scenes have a relentless pace (in particular, the bank heist is a truly impressive, exhilarating setpiece) and the acting is, for the most part, as sturdy as a rock. While this won’t go down as anyone’s shining moment (Hopkins, in particular, is rather stiff), it all works just fine in service of the actual film. As a director, Daniel Alfredson handles the action setpieces just fine, even if some of the more dramatic elements feel a little short-sheeted.

The big problem, as it turns out, is that Alfredson’s film just doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from any number of similar movies: in certain ways, this comes across as a “paint-by-numbers” action film, a generic template where only the names and faces have been changed. None of the characters are really fleshed-out in any meaningful way (there’s some mention made of one of the kidnappers’ families being intrinsically tied to Heineken but that particular plot point leads nowhere), which means that we never get fully invested in them. Sturgess plays Cor like any number of “nice guy forced to do bad things” roles, while Worthington brings nothing new, whatsoever, to his portrayal of the loose cannon. Sonja is just the put-upon significant other, Heineken is just the petulant rich guy. None of the characters ever breaks out of their generic “types,” leaving us with a drama that feels no weightier than the average teen slasher flick.

Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is also one of those crime thriller/heist films where the characters act in inexplicable ways as a means of advancing the plot. They take their masks off at inopportune times, leave witnesses behind, and, in general, seem to do everything they can to get caught. Closing text informs us that no one really knows why the group originally got caught: if the real-life criminals were this sloppy and stupid, I’m pretty sure we don’t need three guesses.

In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of Kidnapping Mr. Heineken isn’t what happens on-screen but, apparently, what happened to the real-life participants after the film ended. As that helpful text informs us, Cor and Willem went on to become criminal godfathers in the Netherlands, after serving their 11-year prison sentences. Cor would go on to be assassinated, with scuttlebutt pointing the finger at his own best friend, Willem. Perhaps it’s only me but that actually sounds like a much more interesting story than the by-the-book heist film that we actually get: it’s rather telling that the film never really sparked my interest until it was actually over.

Ultimately, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken isn’t a terrible film, although it is a terribly familiar one. With its slight characterizations, lapses in logic and adherence to multiplex action movie conventions, Alfredson’s film might play well in the background but it’s unlikely to earn your full, undivided attention. In other words, this beer ain’t bad but it is pretty flat.

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3/19/15 (Part Two) Love, Pink Bees and Inverse Matter

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amnesia, Benoît Charest, Blu Mankuma, Brazil, cinema, class systems, dystopian future, evil corporations, film reviews, films, fish-out-of-water, foreign films, French-Canadian films, Gravity, haves vs have-nots, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Jim Sturgess, Juan Solanas, Kate Trotter, Kirsten Dunst, matter and inverse matter, Movies, Nicholas Rose, parallel worlds, Pierre Gill, romances, Romeo and Juliet, sci-fi, star-crossed lovers, stylish films, Terry Gilliam, Timothy Spall, upper vs lower class, Upside Down, voice-over narration, writer-director

Blame it on the Bard: ever since Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” first inflamed the sensibilities and emotions of its frilled sleeve and pantaloons-sporting audiences, it’s been pretty much the gold-standard of ill-fated pop culture romances. The tale of star-crossed lovers, doomed to be in thrall to each other, yet forbidden to be together thanks to a bitter cross-family feud, has formed the basis for an almost uncountable number of films, books, plays, TV shows, comic books, cartoons and stick-figure flip books. Every writer, filmmaker, content producer and artist brings their own spin to the story: the tale has transcended eras, notions of class, gender, race, sexuality, nationality and religious upbringing. Each and every generation finds something new with the story because, let’s face it: there have been star-crossed lovers since humanity emerged from the primordial ooze and there’ll be star-crossed lovers until our sun finally blinks out of existence.

Argentinian writer-director Juan Solanas’ Upside Down (2012), despite its fanciful sci-fi trappings, is yet another in a long line of films that look to Shakespeare’s iconic play for inspiration. In this case, the intent appears to be to dress up the age-old story of ill-fated lovers with the giddy fantasy elements of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and the grimy, dystopic worldview of Terry Gilliam. Rather than coming up with a fresh, new spin on the old chestnut, however, Solanas’ film ends up being trite, unapologetically dewy-eyed and overly sentimental: it’s basically a happy, multiplex take on Gilliam’s far superior Brazil (1985). As the old saying goes, if that’s what you’re looking for, look no further.

A star-struck, expository voice-over fills us in on the basics of the world from the jump. Essentially, Upside Down is focused on two planets, each with their own individual gravities, societies, social systems and matter (both “regular” and “inverse”). The planets are so close to each other that the metropolitan lights of the “top” world serve as the “stars” of the bottom world: a stark, industrial tower connects both worlds, allowing the privileged “top worlders” to co-exist (in a manner of speaking) with the lowly “bottom worlders.” That’s right, folks: the people in the gleaming, modern “top world” are the haves and the folks dwelling in the run-down, dystopic “bottom world” are the have-nots, condemned to suck up all the waste, pollution and detritus of their well-to-do “Northern” neighbors.

Our surrogate Romeo and Juliet, in this case, are Adam (Jim Sturgess) and Eden (Kirsten Dunst). She’s a privileged “up worlder,” he’s a lowly “down worlder” and they first meet as children, at a point where the two worlds almost touch. This begins a decades-long romance that is harshly curtailed when an “up world” hunting party takes a shot at Adam (“up worlders” and “down worlders” are forbidden to have social contact, you see) and ends up causing Eden to fall and lose her memory. He thinks she’s dead, she can’t remember anything before the accident and they each go about their separate lives.

An inventor, by trade, Adam comes up with a miraculous face-lifting cream that gains him access to the vaunted Trans World tower and the much-envied lives of the “up worlders.” While there, he makes a friend and ally in “up worlder” Bob (Timothy Spall), along with the more shocking discovery that Eden is still alive and well. Fighting against the restrictions and conventions of their individual societies, as well as their individual bodies (“up worlders” and “down worlders” are bound by the conventions of their respective gravities, even when “visiting” the opposing world…this, of course, makes the title a physical reality, while making personal interaction more than a little difficult), Adam struggles to make Eden remember the love they once shared, all while trying to carve out his own slice of the “up world” pie. As Trans World executives pursue the pair, however, they’ll come to realize that every great love involves sacrifice: sometimes, you have to lose everything you have in order to gain the things you really want.

From the get-go, Upside Down makes its intentions quite clear: this is a sappy, traditional, “boy meets/loses/gets back girl” story and any focus on other aspects of the narrative are, for lack of a better term, simply smoke and mirrors. Unlike Gilliam’s films, which take sharp, cynical jabs at the futility of modern life, or Jeunet’s films, which often point out the inherent absurdity of human interactions, Solanas’ Upside Down is really all about the trials and travails of this particular couple. Sure, there are pretensions to more, especially once we get to the giddy finale that seems to indicate that Adam and Eden’s love will, miraculously, transform their uncaring world(s) (as the ridiculously serious voice over tells us, “that’s a story for another time”…oy…).

As a traditional romance, Upside Down hits all of the required beats but never really catches fire: Sturgess and Dunst have decent enough chemistry, for the most part, but there’s never anything especially passionate about them. They seem like the kind of couple that have a good time in high school and then break up the summer before moving away to college: pretty far afield from lovers who would “die” without their partner. There are some clever attempts to make the notion of risking yourself for the one you love a more physical reality (Adam’s special rig, which is the only way he’s able to move around in “up world,” has a tendency to burst into flame when he overstays his welcome, meaning that he really is “burning” for Eden) but, for the most part, this is another example of “tell, don’t show.” The one good counter-example to this is also one of the film’s silliest scenes, as the two lovers hold each other and kiss as they gently spin in mid-air, caught between both of their opposing gravities. It’s the kind of silly, swooning moment that makes Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) seem like Bergman’s Cries and Whispers (1972).

Many of the film’s critical issues can actually be linked back to its frequently silly, nonsensical plot developments. The central idea concerning the opposing worlds is actually pretty great and would have made a really interesting, serious sci-fi film, ala Gattaca (1997), or even something inherently “artier” like von Trier’s Melancholia (2011). Here, though, the notion is squandered and given short shrift in favor of the much more mundane romantic angle: we’ve seen hundreds (thousands?) of takes on Romeo and Juliet over the years…how many films about parallel worlds with opposing gravities do you remember seeing? If you answered “more than one,” you’re doing a lot better than me, let me tell ya.

When the film actually takes the time to focus on world-building and puts the romance on the back-burner, there’s plenty of interesting, eye-catching stuff going on. Our first sight of the massive office room, with the upside-down matching floor right above, is pretty amazing and there’s a really cool sequence involving an extendable chair that managed to trigger my vertigo like gangbusters. A ballroom scene involving a mass of dancing couples, both upside-down and right-side-up, is instantly memorable, as is the Trans World tower, itself, that looks like it was pulled, wholesale, from one of King’s Dark Tower books. Visually, Upside Down has a lot to offer, even if the images are often murky and kind of ugly, alternately under-lit and over-blown.

At the end of the day, however, the film is really too obvious and ham-fisted to make much of an impact. There’s a strong central story, here, and plenty of good acting (Spall is typically excellent as Adam’s friendly “desk mate” and partner-in-crime) but it’s all in service of so much “more of the same” that the film ends up feeling rather generic, despite its wholly original central concept. I really wanted to be all-in here, but the film is just too dewy-eyed to ever take seriously. While I’ll admit that traditional romances aren’t necessarily my cup of tea, I’m more than willing to give a shout-out to any film that knocks it out of the park, regardless of style, content or genre: after all, films don’t get much better than True Romance (1993) and what’s that but a traditional “boy meets girl” story dragged through the gutter? Upside Down, unfortunately, never rises above the level of well-made, pedestrian entertainment: it’s a pleasant enough film, no doubt, but never more than that, despite how high it aims.

 

2/1/15 (Part One): Crazy in Love

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alienists, alternate title, Asylum, based on a short story, Ben Kingsley, Benjamin Salt, Brad Anderson, Brendan Gleeson, cinema, David Thewlis, Don't Look in the Basement, dramas, Edgar Allen Poe, Edward Newgate, electro-shock therapy, Eliza Graves, Even Dwarfs Started Small, film reviews, films, Gothic, Guillaume Delaunay, House of Crazies, inmates, insane asylum, insane asylums, insanity, isolated estates, Jason Flemyng, Jim Sturgess, Joe Gangemi, Kate Beckinsale, King of Hearts, Lady Eliza Graves, lobotomies, love story, lunatics, madhouse, medical school, mental breakdown, mental illness, Michael Caine, Movies, mysteries, period-piece, Session 9, set in 1890s, Shutter Island, Sinéad Cusack, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Stonehearst Asylum, The Call, The Machinist, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, Tom Yatsko, Transsiberian, twist ending, Vanishing on 7th Street

Back in the 2000s, writer-director Brad Anderson was responsible for two of the most interesting, thought-provoking films of the decade: Session 9 (2001) and The Machinist (2004). While Session 9 was a subtle, endlessly creepy psychological chiller about a supposedly haunted, abandoned insane asylum, The Machinist showcased Christian Bale in a haunting role as an emaciated factory worker suffering from insomnia and really seemed to put Anderson on the map. After being duly impressed by both films (Session 9, in particular, is a phenomenal horror film and truly frightening), I eagerly awaited what seemed, on the outside, to be the ascension of a brilliant filmmaker. And then…nothing.

When Anderson finally followed-up The Machinist with 2008’s Transsiberian, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. Unlike his previous two films, Transsiberian was average, at best, a Hitchcock-lite exercise that had been done much more effectively by Sam Raimi with A Simple Plan (1998). While the film wasn’t terrible and featured a good turn by Woody Harrelson, it was a notable step-down from The Machinist. After Vanishing on 7th Street (2010) showed up, however, my disappointment turned into a sort of dismal acceptance: not only was Vanishing worse than Transsiberian, it managed to be a fairly awful film, by any definition. Marked by iffy acting, a scenario that felt cobbled together from much better films and a decided lack of common sense, Vanishing on 7th Street was the first legitimately bad film of Anderson’s I’d seen. After spending the next few years working in television, Anderson returned to the big-screen with the Halle Berry-starring howler The Call (2013), which only seemed to drive home the fact that the party was over. Suffice to say, he fell off my radar at that point.

Which, of course, brings us to the present with Stonehearst Asylum (2014), Anderson’s follow-up to the critically reviled The Call. Since I no longer had any particular expectations one way or the other, I was able to approach the film with a relatively clean slate, so to speak. From the outside, there certainly seem to be a lot of positives here: Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley top-line the cast (never a bad thing), it’s a period-piece set in a turn of the century insane asylum (always a cool setting/time) and it’s listed as an adaptation of Poe’s classic short story, “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.” On paper, this would definitely seem to have all the earmarks of an effective, low-key psycho-drama. In reality, however, Stonehearst Asylum (originally titled Eliza Graves) is much closer to Transsiberian: decidedly average and middle of the road, Anderson’s newest film features some good acting and plenty of nicely realized Gothic atmosphere but is a decidedly “been-there, done-that” affair. It’s always problematic when a film’s big “twist” can be parsed within the first quarter of the film, especially when the film makes great efforts to obscure this fact, only to deliver the self-same “twist” that was previously discovered.

Taking the basic narrative of Poe’s story but expanding upon it (in ways both effective and decidedly less so), Stonehearst Asylum tells the story of Edward Newgate (Jim Sturgess), a newly graduated “alienist” (a doctor who specializes in asylum patients) who finds himself at the mysterious, Gothic Stonehearst Asylum. Once there, he meets the eccentric staff, including Dr. Silas Lamb (Ben Kingsley), the head administrator; Mickey Finn (David Thewlis), the earthy, vaguely threatening chief steward; Lady Eliza Graves (Kate Beckinsale), a piano-playing patient who also seems to serve on the staff and Millie (Sophie Kennedy Clark), the swoony nurse who seems to be smitten with the young doctor.

Settling into his rounds, Newgate discovers that the asylum employs a decidedly unconventional approach: not only are the patients not restricted in their movements or activities, they’re also encouraged in their various psychoses. One patient fancies himself a horse, so Lamb and the staff hand-feed him and “brush him down” regularly. “Why turn a perfectly happy horse into a miserable man?” Lamb impishly responds when Newgate asks why he doesn’t attempt to “cure” the poor, delusional fellow. Most of the patients at Stonehearst are “outcasts” and “embarrassments to their families,” Lamb continues, and have been, for all intents and purposes, abandoned at the facility.

In very short order, Newgate seems to be falling hard for Lady Graves, who suffers from a particularly debilitating form of “female hysteria”: any time she’s touched by a man, her body locks up in a rigid, paralytic state and she becomes completely unresponsive. She looks the piano, however, and her and Newgate begin to bond over their shared affinity for music. At this point, Stonehearst Asylum begins to seem like a Gothic romance, a story about star-crossed, ill-fated lovers doomed to feint and pirouette around each other like so many shadows. There is, of course, another shoe waiting in the wings.

This other shoe drops with a resounding thud when Newgate happens to look into the basement and discovers a group of filthy, hungry people locked in cages. Horrified, he listens in stunned disbelief as the leader of the group, a man who calls himself Dr. Benjamin Salt (Michael Caine), explains that the captives are the real staff of the asylum: Lamb and the other patients overthrew them, imprisoned them and took over the facility. In the strictest sense of the term, the inmates, according to Salt, are running the asylum. In a case of extreme agitation, Newgate approaches Eliza with his discovery and she seems to confirm Salt’s story, with one caveat: the former administrators of the asylum were monsters who tortured the patients in the name of “science” and deserve to be caged.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Newgate doesn’t seem to have anywhere to turn. Although Eliza confirmed Salt’s story, certain discrepancies indicate that either (or both) parties might be lying. If Salt’s story is true, Newgate is in terrible danger, especially if Lamb and the others discover that he knows the truth. If Eliza is telling the truth, however, imprisoning Salt and the others is more an act of self-defense than anything else: restoring the original balance of power could have tragic results for all involved. As everyone around him (including the caged prisoners) continue to act in increasingly erratic, troubling ways, Newgate must figure out how to get both himself and Eliza out safely, even though she’s explained that she has no intention of leaving. Newgate must be quick, however: Dr. Lamb has just developed a new technique called “electro-shock therapy” and he’s quite eager to test it out…if Edward isn’t careful, he might find his stay at Stonehearst to be a bit more permanent than he might’ve hoped.

As mentioned earlier, there’s a lot working in the film’s favor. For one thing, the Gothic atmosphere is always thick and highly effective: aside from Session 9, this is, easily, Anderson’s most atmospheric work. Thick wisps of fog obscure the hulking, angular asylum’s exterior walls, long, dark halls hold endless secrets and the continuous cries and laughing of the insane form a cacophonous soundtrack to the events. The asylum, itself, is a great location and cinematographer Tom Yatsko shoots it to great effect. The cast is also, for the most part, quite effective: while Sturgess and Beckinsale are blandly vanilla as the potential lovers, they’re surrounded by a suitably colorful cast doing some nice work. While Kingsley and Caine occasionally slide from “passionate” into “melodramatic,” they’re still both rock-solid and their handful of shared scenes are an easy highlight. I actually wish that Caine would do more low-key genre work like this: he’s pretty great and lends an air of prestige to the film that certainly helps elevate it.

There’s also plenty of great performances from Thewlis as the ultra-slimy Finn (the scene where he slow-burns over Newgate’s jokey comment about his name is genuinely scary), Clark as the (presumably) nymphomaniac nurse and Brendan Gleeson, in a glorified cameo, as the head alienist. There are plenty of quirky psychiatric conditions on display here, most of which make for (at the very least) some highly entertaining scenes: the man-horse bit is pretty damn great, truth be told. The film is also able to whip up some decent tension, especially as conditions in the asylum begin to rapidly degrade and we can start to see the unfortunate writing on the wall. The lobotomy scene is both effective and highly disturbing and there’s an incredibly chilling scene involving a pair of escapees that manages to be both beautifully visual and a subtle gut-punch.

On the downside, however, Stonehearst Asylum is just never quite as surprising or inventive as it should be (or thinks it is, to be honest). As mentioned, the film’s big “twist” is pretty apparent at about 30 minutes into the film, which makes the various “slight of hand” machinations at the end seem both unnecessary and a little offensive. It’s the equivalent of trying to run a shell game with only one shell: we know exactly where the pea is, so moving the shell in endless circles doesn’t really do anything. The film is also about 30 minutes too long: it would have been much more effective as a tidy 80-90 minute sprint but quickly runs out of ideas and energy when stretched to marathon-length. The use of flashbacks to illustrate one character’s fractured mental state is both ineffective and confusing and the ultimate “twist” makes so little sense as to be almost completely arbitrary. In many ways, Anderson seems to be trying to approximate the look and feel of Cronenberg’s latter-day “prestige” pictures, such as A Dangerous Method (2011) without any of his trademark character development: it’s definitely a far cry from the anguished internalism of The Machinist or, even, Session 9.

Ultimately, Stonehearst Asylum is decent enough, which is actually part of the issue. While well-made and sturdily acted, nothing here stands out: this exact same storyline has already been explored (to much greater effect) in films like Asylum (1972), Don’t Look in the Basement (1973),  Shutter Island (2010)…none of these are necessarily classics but all manage to come up with more unique scenarios than we find here. This isn’t a terrible film but it does seem like a terribly unnecessary one: by-the-book, largely bereft of genuine surprise and unevenly paced, Stonehearst Asylum will probably only be of interest if something…say, a lobotomy, for example…has managed to wipe out all memories of other, better films. Check in to Stonehearst if you like but, unless you’re nuts, you might want to find better accommodations.