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From the Event Guide archive!
This article refers to an event which took place on, or until, 28 March 2006 Film Reviews V FOR VENDETTA The action takes place in the dystopian mid-21st century, where the world is still recovering from a devastating US-led global conflict (in the course of which Ireland was annihilated!). Britain is now under the control of the Orwellian dictatorship of Adam Sutler (Hurt). One night, unassuming TV runner Evey (Portman) is rescued from a potential assault by a cultured, intellectual vigilante in a Guy Fawkes mask, simply named ‘V’ (played by Weaving). Evey becomes V’s ally and accomplice when he detonates a London landmark and uses Sutler’s propaganda news network to call on the people of Britain to join him in a revolt against the tyrannical government on November 5th of the following year. In the meantime, Evey must discover who V is and what is motivating him, all the time dodging the state’s criminal manhunt, a quest that will test her own endurance, values and beliefs. Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s graphic novel was originally published in the 1980s as a response to Thatcherism but this film version, directed by freshman McTeigue and written by the Wachowski Brothers (they of ‘The Matrix’ fame) has been significantly tailored so as to give it an all-too-contemporary resonance. The negation of civil liberties, government spin, censorship and ‘rendition’ are all thrown in. There is also some heavily loaded dialogue, such as ‘blowing up a building can change the world’ and ‘people shouldn’t be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people’. Weaving is a charismatic lead but Portman really doesn’t have an awful lot to do. There are some stunning set-pieces but ‘V’ – the movie and the man - is more concerned with ideas than action. It could have done with more judicious use of the editing scissors and it seems to occasionally lose its bottle but these are minor quibbles. We have a number of action/comic book movies arriving this year like ‘Superman Returns’ and the third instalments of ‘Spiderman’ and ‘Mission: Impossible’ but they will all have to go a long way to match ‘V’ for its urgency, brains and sheer, unadulterated nerve. - Declan Cashin He achieves this aim in spades – or should that be buckets? American students Paxton (Hernandez) and Josh (Richardson) are backpacking around Europe on a hedonistic drink, drugs and sex holiday before returning home for grad school. After meeting up with fellow traveller Oli (Gudjonsson), they follow a tip they receive about a hostel in Slovakia where all their sexual fantasies will be indulged. They are initially caught off guard by the primitiveness of the Bratislavan village and its ominous locals but their raging libidos are their main concern. Needless to say, this ain’t no modern day Henry James-American-in-Europe yarn and the boys soon find themselves victims of a fetishistic, tourist-mutilation ring. Being a big girls’ blouse, I watched most of the bloodshed with my hands over my eyes. ‘Hostel’ doesn’t go for jumps or scares – just all-out slaughter. It may be intensely xenophobic, misogynistic and even homophobic but it sure is an enjoyable ride. Like last years ‘A History of Violence’, its graphic gore serves to make the audience complicit in the bloodshed and to stoke a discomfiting catharsis when one of the characters turns the violence on the perpetrators. It could also be seen as a cheeky riposte to claims that it is Americans who are running secret torture camps in Eastern Europe! Horrifyingly gory and deliberately shocking, ‘Hostel’ is sure to do for student Inter-Railing what ‘Jaws’ did for coastal resort holidays, and there’s already a sequel slated for 2007. Great stuff. - Declan Cashin. In a stroke of ingenious stunt-casting, Ted Levine - better known as iconic serial killer Buffalo Bill in ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ - plays the head of the extended Carter family, who are driving across country to California. They make the fatal error of taking directions from an ominous hillbilly gas-attendant and soon find themselves stranded in the middle of the desert, with a bunch of mutant savages in the surrounding hills waiting to pounce. The orgy of scares, violence and gore kicks off pretty quickly and doesn’t let up. The movie’s focus on the threat of the unknown and loss of control brackets it with recent chillers like ‘Wolf Creek’ and ‘The Descent’. This differs to the extent that ‘Hills’ most certainly carries a big political message. There really is no other way to read it when the hitherto lily-livered Democrat (Stanford) emerges as the one to show his religious, Republican in-laws how to defend themselves when the past actions of the US military-industrial complex come back to haunt the present! It may be big and clumsy but it adds another layer of enjoyment to the experience. If you don’t enjoy these kinds of films, you won’t be able to sit through this. ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ is intensely frightening, deeply disturbing and monumentally unpleasant: in other words, an extremely effective shocker. - Declan Cashin Paul Barnell (Williams) has problems. His travel agency in snowbound Alaska is going under and the medical bills incurred by his Tourettes-afflicted wife Margaret (the scene-stealing Hunter) are piling up. One night, Paul stumbles across the body of a man killed by two sensitive hitmen (Nelson and Brown) and a plan forms. Paul’s long-lost brother Raymond (Harrelson) has been missing for five years but Paul needs to produce his brother’s body before he can claim Raymond’s million dollar life policy. Paul contrives an ‘accident’ for Raymond but the only one not fooled is ambitious claims adjuster Ted (Ribisi). The inevitable ‘oh what tangled webs we weave’ complications arise when the two hitmen track down their missing body – and the real Raymond returns to get his cut of the scam. This kind of story has been done far better in ‘Fargo’ and Sam Raimi’s ‘A Simple Plan’. ‘The Big White’ aims for more conventional laughs than the former and never matches the darkness of the latter. In its own right, however, it’s a funny and well-paced caper. Mylod, as a former helmer of anarchic TV show ‘Shameless’, knows that some humanity is needed to balance this kind of gallows humour and this is achieved by his talented cast. Williams is thriving in these kinds of dark roles lately, whereas the foul-mouthed Hunter clearly has a blast as his flaky wife. Perhaps my recent exposure to filmic toxic waste altered my critical faculties, but I found ‘The Big White’ extremely entertaining. Recommended. - Declan Cashin Directed by Spike Lee. What a strange little movie ‘Inside Man’ is. Owen stars as intelligent criminal (aren’t they all these days?) Dalton Russell who leads his band of robbers into a Manhattan bank and takes all those inside hostage. The NYPD calls in ambitious Detective Keith Frazer (Washington) and his partner (the ubiquitous Ejiofor) to negotiate the hostages’ release. Frazer soon cottons on, however, that this is no ordinary robbery, as the remarkably calm Russell seems to anticipate – even eagerly want – every move the police will make next. At the same time, the banks’ millionaire owner (Plummer) nervously recruits morally-fluid power broker Madeline White (Foster) to cut a separate deal with Russell in order to protect secret assets housed in the bank’s safety deposit boxes. That vague outline is all that I can give you, I’m afraid. ‘Inside Man’ is essentially a bank robber/heist movie but this being a Spike Lee film, excuse me, a Spike Lee Joint, there is obviously more to this tale than meets the eye - too much in fact. The over-packed plot has one too many irritatingly fallow subtexts to fully nail down what exactly Lee is trying to say. ‘Inside Man’ is set in post-9/11 New York, a city fraught with security, cultural and class tensions. One plot turn serves as a clever allegory for how the American authorities are struggling to distinguish between criminals and innocent civilians in the complicated context of the ‘war on terror’. But Lee seems to aim wider than that even, taking shots at white collar crime, video-game violence, racism, the Nazis and even the very foundations of America’s post-war prosperity. That is a pretty strange frame for a bank heist movie and it doesn’t all gel together properly. Lee is having fun a lot of the time – pop culture references, witty exchanges, a jazzy 1940s noirish score – and he has an exceptional cast who are always a pleasure to watch (Foster, in particular, seems to revel playing such a smarmy character). ‘Inside Man’ is entertaining and well-paced but, just like Owens’ character, Lee’s motives are frustratingly never fully made clear. - Declan Cashin. Bree has a problem; mere days before she is to undergo sexual reassignment surgery, an obstacle presents itself in the shape of a jailed teenager claiming to be her son. Rather than ignore the lad’s plight, as her instincts compel her to do, Bree is forced into altruistic action by her therapist who withholds legal permission for her final operation until she has met the boy. Travelling to New York, she dupes him – Toby – into believing she is a Christian missionary on an errand of goodwill. This couldn’t be farther from the truth; Bree plans to dump Toby on his stepfather’s doorstep, effectively washing her hands of him, an act she believes will satisfy her therapist’s irritating bureaucracy. And so, the road movie structure in place, ‘Transamerica’ settles down to being just that – a road movie; two mismatched people forced to share the confined space of a car for a period of time, their initial mutual hostility thawing into respect and eventually warm fuzzies. We have been here countless times before and director Duncan Tucker seems content to add little that is new to the formula; the cogs and gears of his screenplay can be heard grinding away, churning out predictable obstacles contrived to make the learning of ‘life lessons’ almost inevitable. The character of the kid is particularly problematic, however gamely he is played by young Kevin Zegars; the streetwise hustler, old before his time, who searches for love in the wrong places, is a howling cliché. In a nutshell ‘Transamerica’ is a mediocre, and very safe, indie movie with aspirations to controversy, a film given a measure of distinction by virtue of its lead performance. A second, and all too brief delight comes in the figure of Bree’s mother, played by our very own Fionnula Flanagan in the manner of a Gary Larson cartoon made flesh. Her horror over what her only son is about to do to his willy raises a welcome laugh. – David O Mahony Set in a present-day Johannesburg still trying to escape the shadow of apartheid, the film follows the self-titled Tsotsi (the name roughly translates as “thug” or “gangster”) as played by the diminutive Presley Chweneygae, whose dead eyes hold the obligatory tragic back-story – dying mother, violent father, a childhood living rough in the township… The film opens in Tsotsi’s shack, where he and his gang are waiting for the sun to go down. From here, they move to a train-station where Tsotsi nods complicity in the cold-blooded murder of a subway commuter. When later questioned about his sense of decency, Tsotsi half-beats one of his best friends to death and flees the scene, before car-jacking a wealthy black woman whom he unthinkingly shoots in the stomach during his escape. Driving away, he is startled by the sound of crying and crashes the car. In the backseat is the woman’s infant child, wailing and hungry. This marks the turning point of the movie, and it is regrettable to report that after this electrifying first fifteen minutes, the film trickles slowly downhill. Chweneygae gives an undeniably impressive performance, but the script (adapted from Athol Fugard’s novel) holds fast to the tiresome Hollywood recital of fatherhood begetting redemption, which may well explain its success at the Oscars. That said, the South African couple sitting behind me certainly seemed to enjoy it. Perhaps they were picking up details that I – an Irish viewer with only a scant knowledge of the sociological makeup of present-day South Africa – was missing. But such gaps didn’t affect my understanding and huge enjoyment of such films as ‘City Of God’, ‘Nine Queens’ or Amores Perros’, all of which are far superior to this. - Jamie Hannigan Tony Soprano (sorry, James Ganolfini) heads up an undeniably tempting cast as New York steelworker Nick Murder, an oafish type whose just received the elbow from seamstress wife (Sarandon) for his dalliances with sexy lingerie salesgirl Tula (Winslet). With disregard for our eardrums, Nick expresses his pain and confusion through song, the first in an interminable series of dance numbers featuring passers-by and co-workers who step out for some blue-collar hoofing. From here, various sub-plots limp lifelessly to the fore; Sarandon employs Cousin Bo (Walken) to spy on her errant spouse, the Murder’s daughter falls for the local tearaway and so forth. Whole sequences occur in a vacuum, coming and going without so much as a nod to continuity or cohesion. And through it all, the pop standards come thick and fast. That Turturro chooses to conclude the sorry fandango with an insulting contrivance, a piece of third-act emotional manipulation, is proof positive that he ought to remain in front of the camera. This really isn’t about anything, nothing really happens and when it does it feels forced, and without any structure the various incidents and characters collapse, like slabs of kebab meat without the connecting skewer, into queasily amorphous blobs. There is one or two moments when the sheer campy absurdity raises a chuckle, but that’s all I can say. – David O Mahony The writers, David Auburn (author of the original highly acclaimed play) and Rebecca Miller (director of the upcoming ‘The Ballad of Jack and Rose’) deftly manage to pack much of the exposition into that opening sequence. Although perhaps that, and the fact that dialogue heavy theatre plays often don’t fit the film medium, is why much of the rest of it is comprised of lengthy arguments between Catherine and anyone. At other times the screenplay is too obviously signposted, like when Catherine and Hal bond over the notion of his rock band and we just know they are going to have sex; or when Catherine disparages her sister’s chatter about hair conditioner, with some Facts About Nature and it’s obvious that she is SMART. Anthony Hopkins plods through the movie with few glimpses of his capabilities. Another drawback is the miscasting of Jake Gyllenhaal for the second time this year, the first being his attempt at a philosophical soldier in ‘Jarhead’. It’s not that Mr. Gyllenhaal is terrible in either, but just that his puppy-dog eyes and buff bod seem incongruous for these roles to begin with, and then that his skill as an actor (certainly under the direction of Brits Sam Mendes and now Madden) never persuades quite enough to see past his pretty Hollywood attributes. Unlike Ms. Paltrow, who transcends her star status to penetrate her role, such as it is, although admittedly not as well as she did in interpreting that other gifted woman, Sylvia Plath. John Madden has made a good looking film out of this wordy screenplay and acquitted himself with the same acceptable journeyman skills that he brought to ‘Mrs. Brown’ and ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’. To sum up then: adequate direction + miscasting + too much talking + some good acting = a passable, but not genius film. – Sheena Sweeney The film opens on a dreary soccer game, a convincingly ramshackle affair that brought back long repressed memories of being coerced into similar activity by callous teachers at school. I may as well point out at this juncture that I have no affinity for the game, a disinterest that I feel ought not to preclude me from enjoying a good film on the subject – it is, after all, up to the director to engage the viewer in whatever theme he has chosen. Take the example of boxing, a repellent sport which has provided the raw materials for more than a few excellent movies, ‘Raging Bull’ and so on. Anyway, ‘Studs’ opens with amateur Dublin team the Emmet Rovers being soundly trashed, an event which happens with some regularity. The ‘athletes’ themselves are a rogue’s gallery of no-hopers, scumbags and drug addicts that any sane person would cross the street to avoid. How Mercier thought this motley crew would elicit the sympathies of an audience is beyond me, as they are thoroughly obnoxious, each and every one. Upon being beaten, they retire to the dressing rooms to lick their wounds. And then the shouting starts. As mentioned earlier, I am no expert on football or après match etiquette, but I find it scarcely believable that any such discussion would be undertaken at the ear-splitting pitch as it is here presented. This sonic assault could be overlooked if what was being said was witty or compelling, but it isn’t, and the only conclusion one can come to is that the profanity is intended to distract from the perfunctory nature of the dialogue. Things are made even worse by the inclusion of a disastrous mock-heroic voiceover which leadenly compares the players to gods fighting Titans on Mount Olympus and so forth. At best, voiceover is risky and uncinematic, at its worst, it’s cringe inducing. This is of the later order. As for the plot, there isn’t one. Manager Brendan Gleeson shows up, heaven-sent it would appear, to whip them into shape, and steer them towards victory. And that’s it; the characters remain less than one-note, none of their problems, hinted at during the first act, being resolved. Irish films made on a slim budget, which this clearly was, need to have a tight story and good characters to compensate for Spartan production values (see ‘Adam and Paul’). ‘Studs’ has neither. – David O Mahony |
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