Matt not only has to come to terms with his wife’s condition, but he also has to deal with the discovery that his wife was unfaithful and planning to leave him. He becomes fixated with the idea of confronting the man his wife was sleeping with (played by a mature Matthew Lillard), who he finds out is a real estate agent called Brian Speer. He finds out Brian is on vacation, so follows him out there and takes his daughters along for the ride. Matt’s journey to find Brian Speer becomes a journey of self-discovery, as he re-connects with his daughters and deals with his grief.

The focus of the film is the relationship between Matt and his daughters, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller), making The Descendants largely a film about fatherhood. After years of being the less involved back-up parent, Matt finds himself in the position of single  father of two daughters and has to adapt his life to deal with their issues and their grief.

We only see his wife in functioning capacity for about ten seconds at the start of the film, as Matt narrates the circumstances of her accident. With such a limited introduction to her character, it’s impossible for us to really care about what happens to her. It’s her family we are meant to care about, and it’s a testament to the strong performancey of clooney, Woodsley (Alexandra) and Miller (Scottie) that we do find ourselves caring about them and their loss.

There is also a sup-plot in The Descendants involving a large piece of land on a nearby island to Hawaii that Matt and his cousins inherited from their ancestors. They are in the process of trying to find a buyer for this land so they can finally divide the profits. As the sole trustee, it is Matt that has the final say in the matter and his new circumstances change his outlook and his views on the importance of retaining his family’s inheritance and history.

The film is full of funny moments which ensure the tragic elements do not become too depressing. Sometimes the comedy comes out of the tragedy, such as when Elizabeth’s father thumps Alexandra’s slightly dim friend Sid in the face for laughing at his wife’s alzheimer’s condition. Another humorous moment is when Matt runs to his friend’s house in his flip flops in order to confront them about hiding his wife’s infidelity from him. Matt proves it’s impossible to run normally whilst wearing flip flops.

It’s difficult to be funny and tragic at the same time, but Alexander Payne manages it in The Descendants, with the help of an excellent cast and screenplay. The performances are raw and two young girls  are equally worthy of awards praise.  It’s an intimate film about second chances and self discovery that connects with the audience. The final scene is almost uncomfortably intimate, as the family sit on a couch watching tele and are staring directly us without saying anything. Just like we’ve been in their personal space for the course of the movie, they are now encroaching on ours.

Dir: Alexander Payne

Starring:  George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller

Meek’s Cutoff

The group is made up of three families and their wagons and their guide and mountain man Stephen Meek (an unrecognisable Bruce Greenwood).  Meek claims to know the way to a better place where they will be welcomed and given a chance to live the american dream and make their fortune. As the journey progresses and water starts to run low, the group begin to lose faith in Meek and his land finding abilities. As it becomes clear Meek does not know where he is taking them, a power struggle takes place as a new leader emerges.

The film ends unexpectedly when Meek  finally concedes that he doesn’t know the way to a better destination and can no longer lead them. As the film’s title states, he reaches his ‘cut-off’ point. Meek’s cutoff open ending leaves the viewer feeling slightly cheated as they never find out if this group of travellers reach their destination or if instead they perish in the plains. It’a a slow but interesting Western about  trust and struggling to survive in unfamiliar territory.

Dir: Kelly Reichardt

Starring: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Shirley Henderson, Paul Dano

Anonymous

This worry is unnecessary, as Anonymous is presented entirely as fiction. It even opens in a theatre setting, with Derek Jacobi reading a prologue to the audience and announcing that what they are about to witness offers an alternative story about the creation of some of the world most famous and celebrated plays by William Shakespeare. It  ‘offers’ another story in a theatrical setting, it never claims to be fact.

Anonymous  presents a theory that has been believed by a number of scholars for many years, which is that the real author of Shakespeare’s plays was Edward de Vere (Rhys Ifans), the 17th Earl of Oxford. This does not lie with historical fact, since Edward de Vere actually died before several of Shakespeare’s most famous plays were performed, but since Anonymous never claims to be historically accurate, this can be forgiven.  Anonymous also disputes what many belive about Queen Elizabeth the 1st, that she was a virgin Queen. In this film, not only is she not portrayed as a virgin, she is actually presented as a bit of a slut, with a multitude of illegitimate children distributed all around London.

Set in Elizabethan England, Anonymous shows the court corruption and politics of the time.  Edward de Vere is a writer at heart, but because he is also the Earl of Oxford, he is advised by his guardian William Cecil, the Queen’s advisor, to give up writing and pursue a career in politics. After a scandal at court, Edward is blackmailed by Cecil into giving up writing entirely. He does not stop writing but instead hides the authorship of his writings by signing them ‘anonymous’. When his plays start  to be viewed more widely and audiences become impatient to see the playwright responsible, local actor and scoundrel William Shakespeare seizes this money making opportunity and claims them as his own.

The costumes and make-up of the film look authentic. In contrast to films such as Shakespeare in Love, where the characters always look clean and immaculate, Anonymous shows the characters with ruddy complexions and dirty fingernails, which is a much more honest portrayal of the time, when little was known about hygiene. Queen Elizabeth’s stained rotting teeth are quite shocking when you see them for the first time.

People should not be getting so outraged about this movie, as although it does propose the theory that Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him, it does not do it very convincingly. If anything, it actually left me more convinced that Shakespeare was the real author of his plays, since the alternative idea offered did not add up or seem probable.

Dir: Roland Emmerich

Starring: Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis

Of the countless adaptations there have been, the one that sticks out for me is the BBC’s recent stunning TV version of Jane Eyre, which I reviewed only last year. Having given the BBC’s adaptation a five star rating, it was inevitable that I was going to make comparisons between that and this new adaptation. Whereas the BBC version had about four hours to make use of the novel material, this film had to condense the story into around ninety minutes, so it was never going to able to show as much. As expected, I found myself constantly finding fault with the new film because it didn’t deal with elements of the plot as well as the other adaptation had done.

Instead of going straight into criticisms though, i’ll start with the few positives of this Jane Eyre adaptation. If you don’t know the story, Jane Eyre is a plain looking girl who has never experienced much kindness, but is stong willed and knows her own mind. When she takes up the post of governess at Thornfield Hall, she finds herself a subject of interest to the master of the house, Mr Rochester. He unexpectedly sees an equal in her to himself, though they are of  different classes and he finds she challenges him and his beliefs. Mia Wasikowska does portray Jane accurately, even on the aesthetic level. The make-up team did a good job of making the pretty actress appear plain and ordinary in order to make a more convincing Jane. Michael Fassbender is also rightly cast as Mr Rochester, successfully capturing the character’s dark humour and wit. Looks wise, he’s definitely rugged enough to draw in female viewers. I heard one fellow cinemagoer say “he’s so hot he set the bed on fire”, referring to a particular scene.

What’s lacking in the film is the chemistry between the two actors. The passion between Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester is just not convincing, and that for me is essential to my enjoyment of the story. You have to understand how strong the link between the characters is in order to grasp and understand the agony they both go through when they are torn apart from each other by circumstances. The lack of chemistry between Fassbender and Wasikowsa made the central relationship seem farcical and unreal in places where it should have been powerfully moving. This was not helped by the screenplay either. During vital scenes, the screenwriter seems to have taken great liberties with original novel’s material and added entirely new dialogue to make the lines sound cheesy and less authentic. I found myself rolling my eyes at some of the lines, which is never a good sign.

This Jane Eyre is a credible effort but it’s not even close to being the best adaptation of the novel around. If you’ve never read the novel though and are able to judge the movie entirely on its own merits, then you’re much more likely to enjoy this film. It’s a great love story with tragic elements and dark twists that keep you gripped and stop the story straying into cliché .

Dir: Cary Fukunaga

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Mia Wasikowska, Judi Dench, Jamie Bell

A couple of days ago, I saw Super 8. Beforehand, I’d read about how this movie was made as an hommage to 70s and 80s scifi movies, like Spielberg’s ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Like those movies, and unlike the majority of modern scifi movies, Super 8 kinda works as a drama. It’s a bit overly sentimental, but at least it has actual characters, not just explosions and action. But at the same time it fails miserably at being a scifi movie.

Ingredients

I guess that any good movie has two essential ingredients. First, there has to be action. Not (necessarily) fights, explosions and such, but something has to happen. Whether that means the protagonists have to escape from the clutches of an alien monster or find the love of their life doesn’t really matter. As long as there’s an objective to achieve. With most science fiction movies, at least part of the objective is to explore, to find out more about the (alien) world they encounter.

The second ingredient is character development. The audience has to care about the characters, and really want them to succeed. Only then will they get emotionally involved in the story. If you care about the young space adventurer exploring an alien planet, the monsters lurking in the dark will seem all the more scary. And if you too have a temporary infatuation with the adorable girl he’s after, you’ll want them to get together.

Mixing it all up

Most of the scifi movies I’ve seen in the last decade focused heavily on the first ingredient. They pulled out all the stops in terms of special effects, and created spectacular aliens to escape from. But at the same time, I couldn’t care less about the fate of the people trying to do so. And with an essential ingredient missing, those movies simply didn’t work.

Super 8 however, does quite the opposite. It focuses heavily on the dramatic parts. The main character is a boy who’s recently lost his mother, and who barely connects with his dad. He’s also falling in love for the first time, so there’s plenty of drama there. And somewhere in the back, barely noticable with all the emotional close-ups, there’s a FRICKING ALIEN MONSTER!

Backdrop

While Close Encounters explored the magnitude of a real alien “first contact” situation, Super 8 manages to make it look completely insignificant. The main characters will literally turn away from a spectacular alien phenomenon to deal with their personal issues. Like I said in my Signs review back when that movie was released, you simply cannot have an alien invasion as a backdrop. To anything. Such and invasion would be the single most important event in human history.

And yet, Super 8 manages to treat it like an insignificant secondary storyline. One that’s utterly unsatisfying from a scifi standpoint. None of the essential questions are answered. Where’s the alien from? Are there more? Will their race be back to wipe us out? Can we borrow their technology please? Aside from the basic fact that the antagonist in this story is an alien, there’s nothing scifi about Super 8.

Too bad really, because what you end up with is as fundamentally flawed as the all-action scifi movies it was trying to surpass. Lacking that other essential ingredient, Super 8 turned out to not be very “super” at all.

Julia, Dave, and Bobby (Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell) are the horrible bosses making the lives of their employees hell. Nick, Dale, and Kurt (Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis) are the trod-upon employees. As they are friends, they regularly meet for drinks to complain about each of their bosses. As time goes by and their bosses get worse, they drunkenly decide to group together and hatch a plan to kill their bosses and make it look like an accident.

Most people can probably relate to the ‘hating your boss’ idea that this film plays upon, but hopefully not many have gone so far as to consider killing them, so your sympathy for the characters stops when the murder talk starts. It all very quickly gets too far fetched as (plot spoiler ahead) they witness one boss commit a murder and then come after them with a gun, resulting in high speed car chases and police questioning.

Unsurprisingly, the best scenes are the ones involving the bosses at their most horrible. Although their appalling behaviour, including: sexual harassment, office bullying, and bringing prostitutes to the office, does cross the realms of plausibilty, it is at least a little bit funny.

In conclusion, Horrible Bosses is not as funny as it should be. The only reason to see it is to witness Jennifer Aniston playing a character that is not a nice fluffy version of herself. She is actually rather good at playing a total cow. Fingers crossed this performance paves the way for future meatier roles.

Dir: Seth Gordon

Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Spacey, Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day

Red

Red revolves around ex-assassin Frank Moses. On the Retired and Extremely Dangerous list, Frank finds himself being fired upon by a hit squad one evening. After killing them all with minimal effort, he then goes to Kansas City and kidnaps his telephone friend Sarah Ross, fearing that her life may be in danger too.  Sarah provides the love interest for Red, but this wholekidnap sub-plot never really rings true since they are basically complete strangers. It is hardly plausible that she would fall her abductor in such a short space of time, even if he does have Bruce Willis’s face and charisma. Having kidnapped Sarah, Frank then teams up with his fellow retired ex-assassin friends to find out why they have become targets.

The film loses all credibility when John Malkovich appears as Marvin. Marvin is a completely ridiculous character. He is obsessed with conspiracy theories and has built his house in his car. Perhaps with a better script, his character might have generated amusement, but unfortunately he is just annoying and takes up screen time that would have been better served developing the other characters.

The jokes are not funny, the plot is nonsensical, and even for an action movie, the action is way too far-fetched and unrealistic. The last half hour of the film is basically just loud flying bullets, and even with Helen Mirren firing, this becomes a bit tiresome.

Dir: Robert Schwentke

Starring: Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Brian Cox

Animal Kingdom

The film’s lead character is J (James Fracheville) who moves in with his Grandma and her sons after his mother dies of a heroin overdose.  Although his calm reaction to his mother’s death suggests he has not led an idyllic care free life, he appears naive and innocent around his arm robbing uncles. He knows they are criminals as they have no qualms about talking about their line of business around him, but he shows no interest in joining them in their activities.

Another important character in the film is Barry, one of J’s Uncles. His unexpected death early on comes as a complete shock, as he had looked like he was going to be a lead player in the fim. This creates tension as the audience now know they can no longer trust the judgements they  have made prior to this point. The shooting changes the atmosphere of the film, and the nice family setting becomes tense and miserable, as the family cope with their grief and consider revenge and what their next act should be.

The film is full of understated performances. J is a difficult character to make out and doesn’t give anything away. His limited responses to questions and his inability to say “no” to anything he is asked to do imply at first that he might be slightly stupid. However, he has managed to get himself a beautiful smart girlfriend who is clearly taken with him, so this hints that he is not as he appears to be. His quietness and timidness lead the viewer to expect him to act in a certain way and when he doesn’t conform to our expectations, this creates surprise and uncertainty. It also begs the question, will he conform to his family’s expectations or will he surprise them too?

What I found most interesting in the film is that although almost all the characters in the family are criminals, they still don’t strike you as bad people. Armed robberies are their career choice, but aside from that, they appear relatively normal and relatable. The only exception to this is Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), who from the off appears dangerous and unhinged. When Pope is in the room, the atmosphere is tense and uncomfortable as nobody knows he is going to act; when he is not around, the family seem relatively calm and at ease. Since Pope is the eldest of the men in the family, he is the one in charge of making the big decisions, and the rest either follow his lead or incur his wrath.

The most disturbing figure in the film is Grandma Cody.  Although she is a doting mother and does not participate in the armed robberies herself, she is clearly the gel that holds the family together and it is implied in her behaviour and her full acceptance of their criminal lifestyle, that she may be the driving force behind the family’s life of crime. Her sons come to her for guidance and approval and she overloads them with affection and advises them what to do. When a family member acts against her advice though and put the rest of  “the pack” in danger, she shows her true colours and reveals the lengths she will go to to keep her family together and out of jail.

Guy Pearce’s cop character gives a good description of the film  in one of his speeches as he descibes how an animal kingdom is full of strong and weak characters, with the strong surviving and the weak being defeated. He sees J as being a weak character who can only survive if he gets behind a strong person, in either the shape of the police or his family.

It is clear from the start that this film is not going to have a happy ending as J is torn between two opposing sides, neither of which appeal to him.  It is not revealed until the last minute though exactly how this film will end, as the leader of the animal kingdom emerges triumphant after a final bout of bloodshed. Animal Kingdom is fully deserving of the widespread critical acclaim it has received. No doubt if it had been an American movie, it would have received an oscar nod in the best movie category.

Dir: David Michod

Starring: Guy Pearce, Joel Edgerton, James Fracheville, Jacki Weaver

Dr. Horrible is about an aspiring evil genius, reporting to us via his weblog. Dr. Horrible and his alter ego Billy try to balance ‘normal’ life (with problems such as working up the courage to talk to the girl of your dreams) with achieving world domination (with problems such as batling one’s nemesis and getting into the Evil League of Evil by doing enough bad deeds to impress its leader Bad Horse). Not to mention having to practice your evil laugh….

As mentioned, this project came to life during the writers strike, and it is a real labour of love. Joss Whedon, together with his brothers Zack and Jed and the fabulous Marissa Tancharoen, whipped up a delightful tale, which is perfectly executed by everybody involved. Not just by the three leads, Neil Patrick Harris (who goes all out on the singing), Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion (who goes all out on the cheese), but all the others as well: the hilarious groupies (they do the weird stuff!), Buffy alumni Marti Noxon and Doug Petrie as the news readers, all the way down to a bunch of fairly famous actors appearing as members of the Evil League of Evil. See if you can spot them all.

This 45 minute romp, originally broadcast as three 15 minute videoblogs, is so verry funny but at the same time it has all the staples Whedonites have come to expect of a universe created by Joss the Great. The Hero might be evil, the Bad guy might be good. Victory may taste suspiciously like defeat, everything is as dark as it is funny, and the writing and punning is superb. And just wait untill you see Evil League of Evil’s leader Bad Horse (he’s the thouroughbread of sin, you know). Best. Casting. Ever!

This pet project gone big (and I mean BIG: the first time it aired, the servers crashed) is well made, wel acted and well sung. The reason Dr. Horrible works, is that it does not try to please anybody but itself. Everybody involved is clearly having a great time and that makes for a great end-result. Which is not to say that this is an amateur effort. The songs are lovely (you’ll be humming them for weeks), the acting (particularly NPH) is very good. Fillion finally gets to be his most cheesy and the detail (in both the acting and the surroundings) is astonishing. There is always something going on in the background.

As for the dvd: there are tons of extras here. Starting from the very beginning where there is fun to be had with the “do not copy” fbi-logo, to the commentaries, one of which is a musical in its own right and extremely funny. Plus there are a whole bunch of audition tapes from aspiring supervillans applying for the Evil League of Evil. Particularly the first one just screams: spin-off.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing A Long Blog is what happens when truly creative minds are freed from the limitations that ‘the industry’ imposes on them. It goes to show that the desire to make money instead of movies disrupts the creative process. True creativity, when left to roam, will make money almost effortlessly, as this project (which lead to t-shirts, cd’s, books and lots of other merchandise) makes abundantly clear. Personally, I believe Joss Whedon should get a Nobel prize (or at least a whole bunch of awards) for his contribution to Film and TV in the past two decades. But at the very least he should be alowed to create more things like this.

Blue Valentine

In Blue Valentine, the husband Dean(Ryan Gosling) makes a last ditched attempt to rekindle the romance in his dying marriage by convincing his reluctant wife Cindy(Michelle Williams) to spend a night with him in a cheap motel. The motel scenes are extremely uncomfortable to watch, and are so intense that you feel like you’re invading a couple’s personal space by watching them. This feeling of discomfort reflects the way Cindy now feels about Dean; she recoils when he tries to touch her and does not want to be alone with him. The physical intimacy they once shared is now all but completely gone.

The film cuts from the present motel scenes to the past, showing how Cindy and Dean met and got together. Their budding romance is nearly cut short when Cindy announces she is pregnant with her ex boyfriend’s child. Dean offers to bring the child up as his own and proposes to Cindy. As a result, they marry and find themselves tied down and settled with a child before they really even know eachother.

The audience are not shown what has happened in the intervening years for the couple, but there is no need. It’s clear from their current feelings for one another that things went downhill for them the moment they got married before they were really ready. A lot of the film is shot using a handheld camera which reflects the turbulent and unstable nature of their relationship, as well as the dysfunctional nature of the characters.

The familiar story is what I found most disturbing about Blue Valentine, as it was very easy to see why the couple did rush into things and it was not obvious that they were making a mistake. Their actions seem like a logical response to the situation they have found themselves in, and this makes the resulting breakdown of their marriage more heartbreaking and relatable.

The performances by the two leads are superb. They convincingly portray the raw emotions of a desperate couple who have come to the end of the line in their relationship. I was really hoping Michelle Williams would get an oscar for this, but Natalie Portman pipped her to the post. My only complaint regarding Gosling’s performance is that sometimes he seemed to be trying too hard and he didn’t fall into the role quite as naturally as Williams did.

Blue Valentine is a raw film that makes for uncomfortable viewing. It’s definitely not a date movie, but if you can handle the intensity it contains and don’t mind the discomfort, then it’s definitely one to watch.

Starring: Michelle Williams, Ryan Gosling

Dir: Derek Cianfrance