God's Pocket - gritty, working class

Watched this excellent drama last Tuesday evening.  Set in the 1970's working class community of God's Pocket (which seems to be somewhere on the Eastern seaboard of the USA, at some point in the 1970s), it tells the story of a community reacting to the death of the young mouthy upstart Leon (Caleb Landry Jones).  Leon crosses one too many lines and is killed when a co-worker hits him over the head with an iron bar in an act that could be argued is self defence.  The workers at the site though tell their own story to the police, and Leon's death is officially recorded as an accident.  Cue various parties, including Leon's mother (Christina Hendricks) refusing to believe the official story, and searching for a different answer.

God's Pocket is a film that tries very hard to paint a picture of a community, and then allows a story to be told naturally through the interactions of the characters.  This is as opposed to a more typical structure that might focus on the story and introduce characters as and when they fit into the narrative.  The central story of potential murder is one that almost gets lost as the tapestry of God's Pocket is slowly revealed.  This is a community where being born there makes you an insider, and no matter how long you might be a part of it, an outsider is still ultimately an outsider.  Philip Seymour Hoffman (in one of his last ever roles) plays such a character; a man who is respected by the community, but can never be one of them.  His role is of a man who wants to do the right thing but just isn't very good at it, who's heart is huge and in the right place, but who seems unable to escape the baggage of a past the film only hints at.

The film is very clear on portraying the way that the community depicted in the film treats those it sees as being part of it, and those who are outsiders.  There is a moral code of understanding and justice that the community acts upon without outside intervention, which usually ends up doing the right thing if for the wrong reasons or via dubious methods.

I could see some criticising the film for its sprawling narrative.  The story is quite unfocussed and it tries to get through quite a lot of scene-setting characters in a short 90 minutes of running time.  However I see it as being like a striped-down version of Fargo without the comedy, in which the real story is one of a community and how it reacts to its own criminal elements.  The community knows that Leon is a bad egg, probably even his mother knows it too.  So when he ends up dead the presumption is that he had it coming, so why ask questions?  It's a stark demonstration of the principle of natural justice, and how even in communities that appear to exist outside the conventional law, a natural unspoken law exists none-the-less.  Certainly worth checking out.

The Lego Movie - aka The Matrix

I experienced a moment of intense karma two weeks ago when I watched The Lego Movie, posted to Facebook that I thought it was exactly the same as The Matrix, only for the Cinema Sins Youtube channel to post a video hours later pointing out the similarities between the two films.  I really need to get into film reviews.

Aside from stealing my thunder with regards to this review, Cinema Sins are right.  Fun though the film may be, as interesting as the effects may be and as varied and impressive as the cast of voice actors may be, The Lego Movie is still an unrepentant Matrix rip off.  Each film is about an ordinary everyman living an unremarkable life in a world that is in fact a grand lie designed to mollify a suppressed population.  In each film this man has his perception of reality altered by the intervention of a kick-ass babe and is believed to be 'the one' by an aged and kindly father figure obsessed with prophecies.  He doubts the validity of the prophecy but eventually finds it in himself to be a catalyst for change.  Cut to Rage Against the Machine.  Well, The Matrix cuts to Rage Against the Machine.  Not so much of that here.

It's a completely fine adaptation of The Matrix for an audience of children and their parents.  What I don't really understand is the amount of love that this film got when it came last year - it was even nominated for an Oscar for the song 'Everything is awesome'.  I guess it might have resonated very strongly with parents, given the way that it eventually comes to a rather charming and tear-jerking conclusion that smashes through the 4th wall and leaves everyone happily every after.  It's all about family and childhood dreams and how everything would be ok if only parents could learn to love to play like their kids do.  I wont be a complete sour-puss here, it is a very neat ending.  I just don't understand how it's 7.8 / 10 on IMDB worth of neat.

So in conclusion, The Lego Movie is fine enough, but The Matrix is loads better.

Life After Beth - More American Indie with Aubery Plaza

Some American indie film action the other week resulted in watching Life After Beth.  A very weird film in which Dane DeHaan plays Zach, a young adult / teenager who's girlfriend Beth (Aubery Plaza) has recently died.  Zach enters a state of deep depression, in which he wishes he could have his time with her again.  By the very same film convention that allowed Bill Murray to live the same day over and over again, Beth is brought back to life as a zombie and returns to her family.  At first her family try to keep her return a secret from Zach, and then the fact she's a zombie from her.  But it's a facade that can only last so long.

It seems like the theme of the film is very much to be careful what you wish for.  In fact it very much has the feel of a fairy tale or a story from the bible where a character is tested and realises something about life.  Zach wishes he could see Beth again, but when she comes back it doesn't take very long before he realises it's a terrible idea.  Basically the message is that death is a natural part of life, and that as horrible at it feels when someone we love dies, it's a natural part of life as much as anything else.

Aubery Plaza acting style and range probably means that she's going to remain in the fringes of US cinema.  Anna Kendrick has a minor role here, but is someone I would expect to see winning an Academy Award at some point during her career.  She doesn't do too much here, and to be honest I'm a little surprised she's taking roles like this after being so good in Up in the Air and 50 / 50.  But then she's also been in a bunch of shlock recently (Twilight?) so maybe her career's stagnating.  Either way, Life After Beth is an entertaining film, but it doesn't warrant any more than the 3 paragraphs I'm giving it here.  When I saw its IMDB rating of 5.1 I thought it seemed a little low, but having seen the film it's a rating that looks fair enough to me.