Whiplash

Billed to me as 'film of the year so far' by the fine people at RedLetterMedia (even though they didn't actually get around to reviewing it), I was very excited about finally seeing Whiplash - the film for which J K Simmons had his contribution to bit-part acting recognised by the Academy in February this year.  The role he plays here is one any actor would have been eager to get their teeth into, that of obsessive music teacher Fletcher at one of New York's biggest and most prestigious music schools.  Fletcher runs the school's elite jazz band, and expects rigorous attention to detail from his students.  He is revered and feared by all at the school, the students equally scared of being noticed or over-looked by him.

Miles Teller (who looks a lot like Will Wheaton, and who actually plays the drums) plays Andrew Neimann, an aspiring drummer who Fletcher brings into his band and is then driven by varying levels of obsession to succeed.  Initially fearful of his own talent and Fletcher's reputation, he is soon driven by an obsession to be the best drummer in the world - an obsession that Fletcher is all to eager to fuel.  Andrew clashes with his family, his classmates, a potential girlfriend and finally with himself as he is psychologically and physically pushed to Fletcher be the best.

Just taken on a purely dramatic level, this is a superb film.  It's about a clash between two characters who both want the same thing.  It's about excellence, and what it means to achieve that tantalising concept.  It's asks if true talent comes from the heart, the head, practice and dedication, or something deeper in your soul.  But not only this, like any great piece of music it swings back-and-forth before coming to a crescendo with an entirely unexpected denouement.  A final sequence of music plays out that's a battle of wills between characters and a comment on the creative process - "art from adversity" if you will.

Thankfully the Oscars took note of Whiplash when handing their awards out earlier this year, Simmons took an award for his acting, while the film was rewarded for its editing and sound mixing.  The award for sound is obvious, the award for editing becomes clear on second viewing when you realise how Andrew's view of the world and obsession with being the best is faultlessly built up from interesting framing, cuts and camerawork.  Would have been good to see it get the best film award given its simplicity in form that disguises a deep meaning in its heart - but you can't have it all.  Instead we have an outstanding film with an intense performance from J K Simmons that everyone should watch.

Thelma and Louise - What's the girl version of a Bromance called?

Shockingly, here is a film that I hadn't managed to see until only a few weeks ago.  When a conversation about the merits of so-called 'chick flicks' led to an investigation of the imdb's list of 'best' chick flicks, and the discovery that Thelma and Louise is on the list - I suddenly realised that here was a way into the click flick genre I might be able to cope with.  After all, this is a film that has entered the mainstream in a number of ways and for good reasons.

Directed by Ridley Scott, Thelma and Louise is a revenge fantasy in which our two anti-hero leads go on a crime-spree across the southern United States after Thelma (Geena Davis) narrow avoids an attempted rape that results in the would-be raper being shot dead by Louise (Susan Sarandon).  Knowing that no-one is going to believe the story and in all likelihood they will get the blame for almost being raped, the girls decide to go on the run.  What starts as a desperate escape from the injustice of a male-dominated justice system turns into a full-on crusade against macho culture.

Is Thelma and Louise a chick flick?  Well probably, it does have Brad Pitt in the nude after all.  But it's also much more than that genre tag would commonly imply.  It's a crusade against machismo in society, a buddy movie, a love story and an advert for the scenery of the Southern USA.  The film is on the surface extremely anti-macho, but it isn't anti-male.  It tells a story that's very clear at portraying many sides of men, you have Harvey Keitel as the understanding but misplaced cop, Brad Pitt as the ultimate desirable heartbreaker and Michael Madsen as Louise's surprisingly astute and caring husband Jimmy.  Jimmy might not be able to remember what colour Louise's eyes are, but he loves, cares about and respects her deeply.  In this sense it's a film that's a study of men and male behaviour, from the point of view of women.

The ending of the film is a now-famous scene that has been much-parodied, shame that it looks a little cheesy when you watch it now 25 years after it was made.  The power of the story is still there though, and the fact that it still resonates 25 years on shows us how far we still have to come before men and women will be treated equally by everyone at all levels of society.

Enemy - Spiders for some reason

The second Jake Gyllenhaal film I had in my possession recently was Enemy, a film that's much more enigmatic and weird than the relative straightness of Nightcrawler's deconstruction of the American Dream.  Here Gyllenhaal plays two characters, Adam is a distant and disconnected teacher, Anthony is an aspiring actor who appears as an extra in a film that Adam watches.  The fact that these characters are each played by Gyllenhaal provides the driving force of the narrative, since when Adam see's his apparent doppelganger he immediately becomes obsessed by his existence, and resolves to seek Anthony out.

Rather than being a straight-up science fiction tale about a man who discovers his doppelganger, this is a film that is punctuated by weirdness that goes well beyond the realm of 'normal' science fiction.  Adam is a man constantly spaced out, lecturing about conformity, oppression of the state and appearing to barely enjoy his own life at all.  Anthony is shown to attend a sex show in which expressionless men in suits await the finale, a sparsely-clothed dancer appearing to stamp on a tarantula.  Spider webs seem to appear throughout the film, as does an image of a gargantuan spider towering over the city and a final shot that many on the internet have described as genuinely terrifying - even I was moderately rattled by it.  Adam finds himself slowly becoming more like Anthony as the film progresses, eventually the two appear indistinguishable to anyone not actively looking to tell them apart.  They appear capable of switching between each others' lives, conforming to the boundaries that each has set for themselves.

In a film as dense and oblique as this, there are many meanings and interpretations one can draw.  The film was shot with a yellow-tinged filter, giving it the feeling of a nightmare experienced on a long hot summer night.  There are hints at governmental oppression, of fear of commitment, fear of the self, and even that Adam / Anthony live under an oppressive regime - but are unaware of it.  What if the appearances of spiders in the film are to be taken literally, but that the characters in the film have been brainwashed to make them unaware of the terrifying truth around them?  Perhaps Adam / Anthony fears his own infidelity, and that one of them doesn't really exist outside of his own perception?

There's lots to see and think about from this film, plus as ever Jake Gyllenhaal being brilliant.  Perfect candidate for a weird film night - after watching Enemy you'll be eager to have a conversation with someone.

Nightcrawler - American Psycho 2

Somehow I've managed to have in my possession two Jake Gyllenhaal film at the moment, the first being Nightcrawler, a story in which Gyllenhaal plays mysterious unemployed loner Louis Bloom.  Bloom hits upon the idea of driving around the streets of Los Angeles with a police radio waiting for news of crashes and accidents to come in.  He then races to the scene to film the gory aftermath, selling his footage to whichever local TV station will pay the highest price to feed its sensationalist agenda.

Bloom is introduced to us without backstory or fanfare, he is an everyman, he is Norman Tebbit's web dream - the unemployed man who is getting on his bike and looking for work.  All we know about him is that he is here and he is motivated to succeed.  We have no idea why or what made him this way, all we know is that he has bought into the very essence of the capitalist dream, if it makes money then it has to be good.  Bloom will do and say anything to become a success - the American Dream made flesh.

In this sense the film has very similar themes to American Psycho, adjusted for the modern age of sensationalist news coverage.  Bloom represents the American Dream distilled into its purest form.  Bloom has read all the self-help books and can recite the words of aspirational speakers when talking to the people around him.  Bloom has become something other than human though.  In his striving to be the best, to maximise his potential, to live the American Dream, he has lost all empathy.  Bloom propositions his producer Nina (Rene Russo), blackmailing her for sex but dressing it up as market forces - the Capitalist Utopia at work.

In the middle of this is of course Gyllenhaal, giving a tour-de-force in acting as the wide-eyed and terrifyingly driven Bloom.  For Bloom nothing is more important than money, his career and the market forces that will drive him to success.  Thankfully the film did get an Oscar nomination (for screenplay), but I think before his career is done Gyllenhaal will be deserving of more than his current single nomination for acting (for Brokeback Mountain).

Disturbing, well-acted and well-shot with an eerie atmosphere of a society gone wrong, Nightcrawler is an excellent film that that might easily have crept under your radar.  I encourage you to seek it out.

71 - Belfast back in the day

With my job now taking me up to Leamington 2 nights a week I am planning to use the time up here to catch up on films in the evenings.  Last week I watched something I've been meaning to watch for ages when it appeared on my film horizon a year or so ago - 71.  This is a film that tracks the nightmare that one unwilling soldier from Derbyshire finds himself in when him and his unit get shipped out to Northern Ireland in 1971 in the middle of the Troubles.  When a riot breaks out and he becomes isolated from his unit, he is lost in a foreign world inside his own country, and becomes entangled in a world he doesn't understand as he tries to survive.

In 71, Jack O'Connell plays Gary Hook.  O'Connell was recently the star of Angelina Jolie's underwhelming directorial debut Unbroken, however what's clear from his performance here that he'll be making marks in the film world in the future.  Hook is training with the rest of his unit and are expecting to be shipped out to West Germany as part of the UK's Cold War operations there.  However they are suddenly and unexpectedly sent to Belfast, where they become an enemy of the people inside the borders of their own nation.  The film follows Hook as he becomes lost from his unit, becomes the target of IRA hitmen, British Army infiltrators and saboteurs on both sides worried that he will give them away.

This is a film that is absolutely brutal in its portrayal of this conflict, and hardly shies away from the terror and angst that was created in a community still struggling to leave this recent past behind it.  I have relatives from Ulster and have been to county Antrim in the heart of the Loyalist North, but I struggle to comprehend the division and hatred that people felt for their countrymen who often lived only streets away.  It's a battle that's been going on for hundreds of years, a battle that seems alien to people from the rest of the UK.  It's a battle that a majority in Northern Ireland also hope is in the past.  This is a film that attempts to convey some of that baffling and terrifying complexity to the uninitiated - it's a film that anyone with an interest in the modern history of the UK should watch.

Spooks - no, not a horror film

Not been going to the cinema as much recently as I normally do, but I did get to the Reading Showcase on Sunday afternoon a few weeks age to see Spooks: The Greater Good.  Aka - Spooks.  This is the film version of the popular BBC TV series Spooks, hence I guess the reason for the The Greater Good tagline to differentiate it from a normal episode of the TV series.

I am reliably informed that Spooks is in fact the Harry Pearce Show.  I.e. the one constant character throughout the whole series is Harry Pearce, and the plot of the entire series essentially boils down to Harry Pearce always being right.  Normally this sort of Mary Sue author avatar character (see also 1d4chan on this matter) is a symptom of desperately lazy writing, and over the course of an entire TV series I could see it becoming grating, over the course of 100 minutes of film adaptation though it's more than passable.  Also I didn't know Harry Pearce was going to be right until the end when I was informed of the fact - which made the film much more interesting I'll wager.

Perhaps more interesting than the film itself was the appearance of Kit Harrington as ex-agent Will Holloway, the man who Harry Pearce parachutes in to do the leg work while he skulks under cover working out the plot from afar.  Harrington has of course become famous because of his role as Jon Snow in the outstanding Game of Thrones, and as with all such actors it's always interesting to see what they do next.  Harrington was ideally-cast in Game of Thrones because of his obvious looks and grim demeanour, whether he ends up carving himself a niche as an action cliché in the silver screen mainstream remains to be seen.  Here he does well enough, staring darkly in the mid-distance when required and generally being mysterious.

Overall Spooks: The Greater Good is clearly a film that was made because the BBC wanted to exploit some of its IP to generate a bit of income.  And good luck to them.  This isn't I film I think many people will be remembering for its plot in the months and years to come, fun though it is as a diversion.

Almost Famous - almost missed this film

In my quest to delve into the annals of film history and seek out the Oscar winners of yesteryear, it seems I might have overlooked some acclaimed material of the modern era.  Almost Famous was released in 2000, just before I began to watch films as a serious hobby.  As a result it flew completely under my film-dar (that's a pun on radar btw) until a few weekend back.  I think that perhaps in the past I had been given the wrong impression by the film's poster art, which involves Kate Hudson lying on a bed in her pants holding a guitar.  It made the film look like it was about some kind of psychopathic nut-case groupie desperately craving the reflected fame that is provided by hanging around in the dressing rooms of rock stars.

In reality though, Almost Famous - which won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay - is more of a love letter to the rock and roll sounds of the 1970s than any kind of story in the traditional sense.  Patrick Fugit plays Willy Miller, a 15 year old who's mother has skipped ahead several years in school because of his obvious intelligence.  When he gets the opportunity to travel on tour with fictional band Stillwater, he is reluctantly allowed to leave home and is immediately dragged into the crazy hedonistic world of the band.  He experiences the good and the bad of their lifestyle, most notably lead singer Russell's confusing and destructive relationship with 'Band-Aid' Penny (played by Hudson).  She's a 'Band-Aid' because she 'aids' the band in whatever they need.  Surely I need not explain further?

Part coming-of-age tale, part tribute to the rock music of the 1970s, Almost Famous is a story about a boy growing up before his time through the power of music.  At the same time it's about the lead singer of Stillwater - a man who never really grew up because he became a rock star.  Linking these two together is Penny, who seems like a fellow lost soul but despite her connection with the band causing her emotional pain, she understands the world they live in better than anyone.

It's a film you'll want to watch if you have any sort of connection to rock music from the 1970s.  Don't be fooled by the poster.