11/6/14: One Is the Loneliest Number

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Andrew Scott, Ben Daniels, Bill Milner, British films, cheating husbands, cinema, Dickon Hinchliffe, dramas, Eastern Promises, film reviews, films, foreign films, Haris Zambarloukos, illegitimate child, infidelity, isolation, Ivan Locke, Locke, midlife crisis, Movies, Olivia Colman, one interior, one-location, Redemption, Ruth Wilson, set in a car, Steven Knight, Tom Hardy, Tom Holland, UK films, writer-director

From time to time, I find myself presented with films that are a lot easier to respect and appreciate than to actually like: normally, this comes from intensely unpleasant, disturbing horror fare but I sometimes get this same experience from more traditional films, such as writer-director Steven Knight’s Locke (2013). While the film is exceptionally well-crafted and makes great use of its “one actor, one location” conceit, I found it impossible to connect with the main character on any meaningful level, rendering the film more of a style exercise than the dramatic character portrait that it obviously aims to be. Nonetheless, Locke ends up being a dazzling, if subtle, bit of craftmanship and gives Tom Hardy one more mildly intriguing character portrayal to add to his resume.

Hardy is Ivan Locke, the titular “hero” of Knight’s film, although “hero” is a bit of a stretch. More than anything, Locke is a man with his back to the wall, almost entirely thanks to his own doing. When we first him, Locke is leaving a construction site in the wee, dark hours of the morning, heading off for points unknown: the entire rest of the film will consist of nothing but the character driving, all interactions with other characters coming via his frequent phone conversations. Right off the bat, we’re thrown into the deep end, coming into the story in media res as Locke tries to deal with various problems, the chief one being thus: in the morning, he’s supposed to be overseeing the single largest concrete pour in European history (outside of military and nuclear installations) but he’s currently driving in the opposite direction, racing across town to a hospital. At the hospital, Locke’s middle-aged secretary, Bethan (Olivia Colman), is preparing to give birth to a child that’s the product of her and Ivan’s one-night stand. Determined to do “the right thing,” regardless of the consequences, Locke has promised to be there for the birth of the child, even though any problems with the construction job will cost his company upwards of $100 million, effectively wiping them from the face of the earth.

And then, of course, there’s the little issue of his family: neither his loving wife, Katrina (Ruth Wilson), nor his young sons Eddie (Tom Holland) and Sean (Bill Milner), have any idea that Ivan is about to blow their happy world apart. When Ivan calls his wife to explain why he won’t be home, the situation goes from zero to one hundred in seconds, with a devastated Katrina giving Ivan the ultimate ultimatum: get home now or don’t come home at all. Ivan is a “principled” man, however, and he’s determined to see his decision through to its necessary conclusion, even as his boss, Gareth (Ben Daniels) screams at him, his kids innocently relay details of a football game that Ivan should have been home watching and Bethan, whom Ivan slept with out of “sympathy,” proclaims her love for a man that she knows doesn’t care about her. As his personal life collapses around his ears, Ivan must also deal with his co-worker, Donal (Andrew Scott), as he tries to troubleshoot him through one work problem after another. Through it all, however, Locke seems to have one mantra running through his head: fix the job and he can fix his marriage. Life is never that easy, however, and as the night rolls on, Locke may just be running out of time…and luck.

Let’s get one thing squared away up front: Locke is a meticulously crafted film that provides a more than suitable showcase for the kind of understated performance that Hardy is capable of when not surrounded by CGI explosions. Cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos makes great use of the film’s one location, giving us plenty of beautifully-lit shots of the twinkling night outside Locke’s car, as well as the dark, dashboard-lit interior. The musical score, by Dickon Hinchliffe, is suitably droney and atmospheric, helping to add tension to scenes that are, literally, just Tom Hardy talking into a car phone. In all respects, Locke’s central conceit could have been its downfall but it ends up working spectacularly, similar to the coffin-locale of the Ryan Reynolds-starrer Buried (2010). Far from being a dull, monotonous affair, Locke is consistently engaging, albeit relentlessly straight-forward.

The biggest issue, at least as far as I’m concerned, is that Ivan Locke is never a sympathetic character: he’s a human wrecking ball whose strict adherence to an ill-defined code of “ethics” propels the film’s narrative in the same way that the T-rex got rid of those pesky raptors in Jurassic Park (1993). Ivan’s motivations are never clear: he obviously has no interest in Bethan and still feels a connection to his family, yet he consistently makes decisions that put him on opposite ends of the spectrum. While the film’s conclusion hints at a resolution, of sorts, the whole thing feels so unemotional and cold as to be largely academic: it’s as if Locke reasoned out the pros and cons of everything, tallied the results and came up with as scientific a response as possible.

This cold detachment sits at distinct odds with the film’s few moments of genuine passion: Locke’s angry explosion when he realizes that Donal is getting drunker by the phone call…the bit where tears roll down his cheeks as his son describes a football goal that couldn’t be less important in the grand scheme of things…these are the little moments, the sparks that threaten to bring Locke to glorious, blazing life, only for Hardy’s composed frown and slightly distracted demeanor to douse the flames. It’s often been said that Stanley Kubrick’s best films were cold and mannered to a fault: while I’ve never agreed with that particular criticism, it’s one that I can level at Locke without a moment’s hesitation…the film is cool, mannered and detached to a fault, bleeding away most of the impact in the process.

Knight, who also wrote and directed the dour Jason Statham-vehicle Redemption (2013), as well as the screenplay for David Cronenberg’s amazing Eastern Promises (2007), is an obviously gifted filmmaker who displays the same eye for the dark, neon-lit gutters of humanity that Nicholas Winding Refn does, albeit without Refn’s trademark deft touch. Despite feeling disengaged from the main character and emotional beats, Locke was always a pleasure to watch, a similar feeling that I had when I first saw Redemption. I’ll always be the biggest supporter of tricky, against-the-grain filmmakers you’ll run into, so there’s no way I won’t give Locke at least a recommendation, no matter how slight. That being said, I can’t shake the feeling that Knight’s sophomore production could have been so much more powerful if I…you know…actually cared about any of the characters. Style over substance? Perhaps but I’m more than willing to accept a ride from Knight the next time he decides to prowl the nocturnal streets.

1/4/14: Saturday Night’s Alright (for Movie Watching)

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'80s slasher films, action films, April Fool's Day, documentaries, documentary, dramedy, Dziga Vertov, Exiled, experimental film, fan conventions, films, Friends with Kids, gangster films, Hong Kong films, horror films, Jason Statham, Johnnie To, Lebowski Fest, Man with a Movie Camera, Redemption, rom-rom, Russian film, slasher films, Takeshi Kitano, The Achievers, The Big Lebowski

Welcome to our first Saturday edition of The VHS Graveyard. As a movie fanatic, weekends are my go-to days for mass viewings. I usually like to wake up early, get a few foreign or silent films in to kick-start everything and then proceed to plow my way through my “must-see” list for the day. This Saturday, I was able to take in six films: not quite my best tally but not too shabby. This, then, is how the day progressed:

Johnnie To is often described by waggish critics as being the “Hong Kong Jerry Bruckheimer.” This, to be fair, isn’t completely shy of the truth but is unnecessarily reductive. In all honesty, Bruckheimer wishes that he had the wide-ranging scope of To’s films – action, gangster, drama, comedy…he’ll take on pretty much any genre and give it his customary sheen.

When To’s gangster films are good, they’re very good, reminding me of flashier versions of Takeshi Kitano’s iconic ’90s-era gangster films like Sonatine and Boiling Point. Exiled ends up being quite good, although it’s also a rather strange duck. Posited as an intermingling of the gangster and spaghetti Western genres, Exiled is high on style but rather light on substance. We follow a close-knit group of hitmen as they move from job to job, ending with a double-cross that sees them on the run from an angry mob boss.

While the storyline itself can be unnecessarily cluttered (there were a few times when I lost track of the cross/double-crossing and was utterly in the dark), there is no denying the power of the action and imagery. To manages to replicate the essential feel of a spaghetti western without simply cramming in the various pieces of a gangster film. The result is a hybrid that manages to take the best aspects of both (the elegiac pace and dry-as-dust soundtrack of the western, the kinetic Technicolor atmosphere and frenzied pace of the Hong Kong bullet ballet) and make something wholly interesting. The film isn’t perfect but, when it works (an amazingly framed shoot-out in a scuzzy doctor’s apartment would be the highlight in any of a hundred other films), it’s pretty unforgettable.   Throw in some very nicely handled thoughts on friendship and we’ve got something well worth seeing.

As a former film student, I’ve always had a soft spot for Russian pioneer Dziga Vertov. One of the true forefathers of cinema, Vertov was constantly experimenting with the very fabric of cinema even in its earliest days. I’d managed to miss seeing Man with a Movie Camera up until now but I’m glad to have finally rectified that situation.

Ostensibly, Man with a Movie Camera is just what the title says: a man (with a movie camera) rushes around 1920s-era Russia and captures every aspect of society. Literally. The camera catches life and death (a birth and a funeral); love and sorrow (a wedding and folks signing divorce papers at a court-house); rich and poor (the well-to-do in elegant finery and filthy hobos in the street). There is no dialogue and no intertitles, even though the film is, technically, a silent film. Here, Vertov was interested in challenging the very idea of narrative filmmaking, birthing a form of documentary realism that is still very evident today.

There’s a playful sense of surrealism to much of the film, particularly in scenes where the cameraman looms Godzilla-sized over the city or films from inside a full glass of beer. Stop-motion (a self-moving camera and animate plate of crawfish are particular highlights) helps to heighten this sense of “realistic unreality.” More than anything, however, possibly due to the documentary film-style and lack of intertitles, Man with a Movie Camera feels very current and nothing like what we might presume a silent film from 1929 to feel like. The ending even features the cameraman racing around the streets and is filmed like an action sequence, complete with pulse-pounding score.

Ah, ’80s slasher films…so much variety, so many clones. April Fool’s Day has the virtue of being one of the more notorious ’80s slashers for one very important reason, a reason that I won’t spoil for you. Suffice to say, however, that you will feel cheated by this film’s ending.

A group of obnoxious, stuck-up college kids (plus the obligatory nice hick and square British woman) head to a strange friend’s secluded mansion for some good ol’ fashioned fun. The friend is named Muffy and she may or may not be crazy: she also may or may not be trying to kill everyone one by one.

The “twist” is genuinely awful, although it does automatically remind one of the twist in House of the Long Shadows. That may have not been a great film, either, but it had the benefit of featuring Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. All that April Fool’s Day has going for it is some okay gore, cheesy acting and that forehead-smacking ending.

Hardcore fans of anything are, by definition, kind of nuts. Fan, after all, is a shortened form of fanatic. Hardcore fans of particular films or franchises, however, can give a whole new meaning to the term. Try and have a conversation about anything Star Wars or Star Trek-related with a hardcore fan of either and see how fun that is.

Since fans are kind of kooky, a documentary about hardcore fans of the Coen Brothers’ “The Big Lebowski” and the Lebowski Fest that they attend yearly must be equally kooky, right? Oh boy, yes.

For the most part, The Achievers is an entertaining but slight (very, very slight) examination of Lebowski Fest. For the most part, you get the exact same level of fandom/insight from most of these folks that you would from any other group at Comic-con, swapping the term “Jedi” for the term “Dude.” There’s one really nice quote from one attendee where he states that, “It would be cool if having just thing in common was enough.” Wouldn’t this be nice, indeed? Unfortunately, save for the parts where we’re introduced to the actual people who inspired the characters in The Big Lebowski (the actual Dude is nothing like I expected…Walter is EXACTLY what I expected), there’s not much of use here. As my long-suffering wife perfectly put it: “Can’t anybody just like something?”

Promoted as an ensemble comedy but really more of a traditional two-character-driven rom-dramedy, Friends with Kids is a decidedly middle-of-the-road experience. For the most part, the performances were quite good, with Jon Hamm and Maya Rudolph being personal favorites. In the end, however, there’s something rather disingenuous about the whole thing.

Adam Scott and Jennifer Westfeldt play best friends who are part of a close-knit group with two other couples (Maya Rudolph and Chris O’Dowd, Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig). When the other couples begin to have kids, the platonic friends feel left out and devise a plan to have a baby of their own: they’ll raise it together, allowing each other to invest maximum time in finding a significant other who will be happy to raise the child as their own. Get it? Yeah, it’s a bit harebrained, to say the least, but makes a bit more sense in practice than on paper. Naturally, complications ensue, the two friends fall for each other and raising a baby is hard work, ya know?

As I stated earlier, this is a perfectly pleasant, enjoyable film with (at least for me) one glaring exception: Jennifer Westfeldt. Nothing against her personally, but her character came across as a complete tonal mess. I would have given anything to have either Rudolph or Wiig take that role but Westfeldt managed to play her character with such complete blankness that I never felt for her. It was like watching a Shakespearian actor attempting to converse with a Juggalo – lots of words coming out but no connection being made.

I went in to this with no small measure of enthusiasm. I like Jason Statham just fine but critics everywhere (including Badass Digest, one of my go-to blogs) had been trumpeting this as something special: not just another Statham action film but an honest-to-god movie! How could I not be eager?

In reality? This is just another Jason Statham action film. There are some attempts at a broader significance (he was in the Iraq War and did terrible things…because it was a terrible place…and now he’ll never forget…or forgive…himself) and the action sequences were actually framed in the real world, versus something like Crank. Unfortunately, however, there just wasn’t much of interest going on around it.

The basic plot is this: Statham’s girlfriend is killed and he goes on a long, convoluted quest for revenge. In between, he beats some people up, kills a few others and romances a nun. The film has a look that recalls Only God Forgives in certain ways (check out the neon-color scheme for the above poster and tell me that doesn’t look familiar) and the vibe is decidedly downcast. In the end, however, this really is just another Statham flick: no better or worse, despite what some critics seemed to think.