10) Pain and Gain (Michael Bay)
Michael Bay's
talent for flashy visuals and breakneck pacing finds perfect material in Christopher
Markus and Stephen McFeely's darkly comic screenplay. At first Pain and Gain seems like the kind of
buddy action movie
Bay started out making
back in the 90's until it becomes clear we've been spending time getting to
know the bad guys. Mark Wahlberg's regular guy screen persona is subverted here
as his likability masks a violent sociopath pumped up on steroids and the
advice of self-help gurus. The most under-appreciated of last year's films based
around American excess and criminal activity it's a shame after this Bay is
going back to making films about giant robots and he is taking Wahlberg with
him.
9) The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann)
Luhrmann's typically flamboyant take on Fitzgerald wound
people up but I thought it worked well as an adaptation of a difficult to film novel
and DiCaprio makes for an affecting Jay Gatsby.
8) Il Futuro (Alicia Scherson)
Despite the hopeful promise of the title Scherson's
affecting idiosyncratic coming-of-age tale is about coping with the past.
Orphaned teenager Bianca (Manuela Martelli) reluctantly becomes involved in a plan
to rob Maciste (Rutger Hauer), a former movie star now retired after losing his
sight in a car accident. What begins in poetic realist territory morphs into
Beauty and the Beast as the young woman enters Maciste's world, a mansion
sparsely furnished save for memorabilia from the sword and sandals movies he
once starred in. Scherson has fun using clips from the old Kirk Morris Hercules flicks to represent the young
Maciste, while Hauer's own screen history of being adept at playing either hero
and villain means Maciste is an enigmatic figure, at once beguiling and
potentially dangerous. There's an otherness present too in the light which
never stops shining through Bianca's window, or the colour of the car her
parents died in changing colour after the accident emphasising the difference
between before and this new grief tinged life.
7) Natan (Paul Duan & David Cairns)
Haunting documentary recovering the reputation of Bernard
Natan, a successful film producer France in the 20's and 30's written out of
cinema history despite his considerable contribution to the industry including
owning Pathé at one point. An innovator Natan built his own all-purpose studio which still exists today as France's
leading film school though at present there is no record of his involvement. In-between
interviews and archive footage a Natan effigy prowls an abandoned studio like a
restless spirit countering the accusations which were levelled against him when
he was alive. I saw Natan without
knowing anything about the subject matter and that's the best way to see this
strange and heartbreaking story so I'll say nothing about his downfall except
to see this film and remember his name.
6) Mud (Jeff Nichols)
Jeff Nichols has quietly emerged as one of the most distinct
voices in American cinema over the last decade. Shotgun Stories (2007) is a small masterpiece though I found his breakthrough
movie Take Shelter (2011) hard going.
This soulful coming-of-age tale about a young boy befriending a killer hiding
out on an island however is his most moving film to date. Nichols sympathy for
all sides involved is remarkable as is his feel for small town life. And how
pleasing to see one of the great American character actors, Joe Don Baker, back
onscreen.
5) Caesar Must Die (Paolo & Vittorio Taviani)
Certain scenes in Caesar
Must Die are clearly staged for dramatic effect making this is more of a
meta drama, a commentary on the nature of performance and themes in
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar than a
straight documentary. Most of the
inmates in Rome's
Rebibbia prison are inside for their involvement in organised crime so the
power struggles and violent betrayal clearly resonate with these men. Just as
Shakespeare's characters reveal themselves in private moments away from the
crowd the Tavianis allow these men to talk in their cells about their own
experiences and feelings about the play. Caesar
Must Die opens with the final curtain being raised on a triumphant
production and the journey there proves to be a moving study of the effect art
can bring to people's lives and of what it means to be confined.
4) Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)
Jessica Chastain's CIA agent becomes the latest to exemplify
Bigelow's interest in obsessive loners searching for the ultimate high in this
remarkable follow-up to The Hurt Locker (2008).
A sober, reflective piece which is only controversial if you believe showing
something onscreen be it torture or the deaths of civilians during the
harrowing raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound condones it. In which case you're
an idiot. There is no triumphalism here only an acknowledgement of the terrible
loss motivating the hunt for Bin Laden and the tempered knowledge by the time
they finally caught up with him his death only mattered in symbolic terms.
3) Après Mai (Olivier Assayas)
I really wasn't expecting to like Après Mai given the trailer made it look like yet another baby
boomer hagiography of the 60's. It's so much more, a portrait of a filmmaker as
a young man and the moment in life
where youthful idealism must give way to pragmatism. Olivier Assayas
autobiographical movie follows a group of teenagers trying to keep the spirit
of 68' alive at the onset of the next decade. Art and politics are intertwined.
These kids are flawed, middle-class, and a little pretentious. They could be insufferable were it not
for Assayas compassion towards them. It's shot through with a hazy feel for
lost summers and an increasingly melancholy tone as the reality of finding a
place in the world begins to weigh upon them.
2) Under the Skin (Jonathon Glazer)
A pared down adaptation of Michael Faber's novel 'Under the
Skin,' Glazer's film is more opaque, less interested in explanations and owes a
fair amount to the work of peak period Nicolas Roeg. A Hollywood star seems as
unlikely a visitor to certain parts of Scotland as an extra-terrestrial so
there is something quite surreal about seeing Scarlett Johansson at the wheel
of a white transit van kerb-crawling for neds. Especially as she's sporting a
bubble perm that would have got her a place in the 1978 World Cup team. The filmmakers
designed a lightweight hidden camera so Johansson could move freely amongst
people without them knowing they are being filmed. It lends Under the Skin a cinema-verite feel. People
are going about their daily lives in the background, unlike in most films where
extras are trying hard not to stare at the camera. An unsettling and haunting
piece of cinema which oddly enough belongs to the tradition of Scottish-set
films (I Know Here I'm Going, Local Hero)
suggesting this place can have a profound effect on the lone traveller.
1) The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino)
Sorrentino's exhilarating odyssey through Rome follows an ageing writer as he begins to
feel a growing sense of unease at his comfortable lifestyle. Jep (Toni
Servillo) came to the city as a young man, wrote a great novel (or so his
friends say) and threw himself into being a part of the Rome's extravagant
nightlife. The death of an old flame slowly begins to wear down his fastidious
public persona. There is a tender relationship with a forty-something
stripper, crying at funerals, and the urge once again to write a novel.
La Dolce Vita (1962) is an obvious
forerunner though Fellini damns his characters whereas
Sorrentino loves these people despite their flaws and pretensions. All in their
own way are searching for some kind of transcendence. The refrain Sorrentino (a
master at finding the right music to accompany the lush images he puts
onscreen) uses for Jep's yearning is somewhat eclectically a song by the
Scottish poet Robert Burns with the lyric "My
Heart is in the Highlands/My Heart is Not Here,"
the lament of a wanderer. Flashbacks of the young Jep's idyllic youth seem to hold
some meaning but are undercut in an enigmatic final sequence which suggests the
lost lover would never have been enough. It's all just a trick.
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