Cinema 2011 #31: Limitless

Would you be tempted by it, a magical little pill that sends your cerebrum snapping at 100% capacity? Limitless, based on Irish writer Alan Glynn's The Dark Fields, raises such a question and it's the choice facing Eddie Morra, a fast-talking New York writer down on his luck and with a book advance that’s fading fast. Mind altering substances are nothing new to cinema, with Alice and Neo and friends shoveling down stimulants and narcotics like they’re juicy Big Mac-Guffins, leading to adventures and dangers, and the occasional hangover. Well this time round, the hangover comes courtesy of chiseled charmer du jour Bradley Cooper and a daily dose of NZT-48, a tablet smarter than an iPad, and designed to turn your grey matter Technicolor. Yes, it would seem that in just one peristaltic gulp the very secrets of the universe can be unlocked, with your brain processing information you never knew you knew, remembering every minute detail that’s every stimulated your synapses and turning you into a suave and dapper Rain Man.

The story itself is simple and fun, the writers getting creative with just what a total loser at full speed can achieve. Master languages in minutes, finish that novel before dinner, dominate Wall St. by dusk, and even have time to tidy up, there seems to be no… em… limit to what Morra can do. Cooper is just about charming enough to pull Eddie off, winning the audience over with an affable performance, but not one that will send him into the stratosphere just yet. He succeeds in sidestepping the obvious dangers of a pill the equivalent of mental Viagra, in that his Morra, essentially an insufferable know-it-all, isn’t the biggest prick on the planet. 

Cinema 2011 #30: The Rite

In 1973 a demonic figure by the name of Pazuzu turned the satanic possession of a young girl into the permanent possession of a horror subgenre. Nothing, neither jerky camera jitters nor flashy 3d behemoth, can compare to the institution that is The Exorcist, the most iconic horror film of all time. With a backstory as creepy as its plot, a gross of over half a billion dollars, and a tantalising blacklisting by the Irish film censors till 1990, it has occupied a reference point in every occult film, and irrevocably damaged the sales of pea soup, for nearly 40 years. And so, when it comes to The Rite, Swedish director Mikael Håfström’s exorcising thriller, it’s hard not to think that the spectre of the 70s shocker looms heavily over proceedings.

And like so many other exorcism horrors, The Rite aims to seize the audience’s interests by claiming to be based on true events, even going so far as to assert papal and literary credentials in its opening credits. The story revolves around rising Drogheda star Colin O’Donoghue as Michael Kovak, an American seminarian whose chilly upbringing in his father’s mortuary makes the Six Feet Under family seem positively wholesome. Escaping to religious life, Michael excels in his studies, yet his faith is never quite so certain. In order to win him back to the flock, his teacher, a game Toby Jones, sends him off to Rome, to learn how to be an exorcist, with the hope that casting out demons in others will help free Kovak of his own.

Cinema 2011 #29: Killing Bono

A short, talented, cocky, philanthropic, smug, erudite, tax-exiled, influential, holier-than-thou, sunglasses-sporting tosser, whose self-styled pseudonym sounds like the other half of a Cher variety duo. Yes it’s U2 frontman, Bono, and a sideways glance at his meteoric rise to music fame, told through the green eyes of his schoolmate Neil. It’s a bit of fun, it’s very camp, but sadly Killing Bono just isn’t deadly.

Imagine growing up in Dublin in the late 70s and watching your mate Paul go on to form the biggest band in the world since The Beatles, top trumping your own troupe with global success as you struggle to even make it on the domestic scene. That’s what happened to Neil McCormick, carrying a grudge the size of the Irish banking bailout, and about whom U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind could have been named. This liberal adaptation of McCormick’s memoir I was Bono’s Doppelgänger has tongue firmly in cheek and some winning performances. But it falls apart with crass and ill-advised stabs at bawdy humour and gangster subplots. Like U2 themselves, it all started so well…

Cinema 2011 #28: The Lincoln Lawyer

Well well well, what do we have here? A Matthew McConaughey film, is it? Not another Rom Com, surely? How could they spin another one out of this cowboy’s conveyor belt career? What exactly is he up to in this one? I mean, how many minutes of leaden laughs and predictable plotting will I have to sit through before his curly blonds, baby blues, molasses smile and Texan drawl win her over? Presumably this time, it’s… let me see… Katherine Heigl? Right?! No actually. Apparently this time he’s playing it straight, a drama if you will. No popcorn chuckles, no romantic dalliances with dolls and dames and ghosts of raped Dickens. Instead, having spent the last ten years riding the Date-Night Train to Moneytown, McConaughey is going to show some versatility, some dramatic frailty as he tiptoes across the thin plot of The Lincoln Lawyer.

And it’s a very pulpy plot, typical of the pop-lit twists and turns expected of courtroom thrillers. This time round, it comes from Michael Connelly’s novel, and tells the tale of Mickey Haller, a hot shot lawyer in Los Angeles, dealing with the lowest of the low brow, a shyster cutting deals with bailiffs and biker boys on the side, known for getting you off the hook, or dropping you in it if things don’t look too good. He operates from a mobile office, a classic Lincoln sedan, driving around a grimy LA that’s a concrete metropolis, far from the city where dreams are made.

Cinema 2011 #27: Submarine

Sometimes a film comes along from nowhere, slipping in under the dark and stormy waters of the big screen sea, cruising past the swell of blockbusting supertankers, to rise to the surface as one of the best films of the year. Submarine is such a film, a brilliantly funny and stylistically flourished feature from that autistic guy from The I.T. Crowd.  Yes, this is the film debut of Richard Ayoade, better known as his sitcom alter-ego Moss, as well as supporting roles in a host of the coolest cult shows on British TV to boot. In his spare time, Ayoade’s been wracking up quirky music videos for the indiest of indie bands on the music scene, and here, he finally gets to explode onto the big screen, depth charging your heart with the cleverest film you’ve ever seen about a 15 year-old boy losing his virginity.

The story, based on the Joe Duntorne’s novel of the same name, follows schoolboy Oliver Tate, an eccentric in a duffle coat, whose musings on the world, and Swansea’s industrial estates, reveal him to be dour and calculating, yet hopeful and extremely funny. With his shanks of dark hair and sly smile, newcomer Craig Roberts is brilliant as Tate, anchoring his precocious intelligence with humility and excellent comic timing. His Tate is a cross between Amélie Poulain and Harold of Harold & Maude, a worldweary oddball out to make things better.

Cinema 2011 #26: Norwegian Wood

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Based on the 1987 cult novel by enigmatic Japanese scribe Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood is something of a Catcher in the Rice for all harajuku hipsters and literate westerners alike. It’s the tail of the turbulent power of love and loss as seen through the eyes of Toru Watanabe, a young student in Tokyo on the verge of manhood, and falling in love with two damaged women. By far the most widely read of all of Murakami’s works, Norwegian Wood was often put among the classic list of unfilmable books, a sprawling story of the lust and sex of the swingin’ free love 60s, with stirring sequences of richly romanticised landscape, lunatic asylums, suicides and The Beatles.

To be blunt and wrap up at the beginning (well, Japan is ahead in terms of time zones, I suppose), Norwegian Wood is a solid film, but by no means a brilliant one. While most Murakami purists will bemoan the slash and burn forensics necessary to bring a 400-page narrative to an already generous 133-minute movie, certain passages and choice conversations had to be lost in the miasma of moviegoer attention spans and bladder sizes. That said, this is decidedly not a popcorn flick, instead falling victim of the archetypal foreign film stereotypes – slow, subtitled, sparsely dialogued, and reliant on sex to give it some life.

Cinema 2011 #25: The Company Men

14.7%.  444, 299 on February’s live register. That’s the current state of unemployment in Ireland according the Central Statistics Office. The last four years of economic emergency have resulted in an 81% increase in emigration, with our country’s youth bleeding away to far flung corners of the globe, and a daily financial funk in every news bulletin. If there’s any place on Earth that can empathise with John Wells’ The Company Men, it’s the country whose glory days seem long past. The story of corporate downsizing and its effects on three white collar workers, Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones, after they lose their jobs. Shame then, that only one of them is worthy of any sympathy.

The Company Men was written and directed John Wells, a producing and writing alumnus of some of the best shows you’ve watched on the small screen – The West Wing, ER, Third Watch – and marks his feature film debut. It’s the story of the GTX Corporation, a maritime company facing hard times, which resorts to slashing staffing figures in an effort to balance the books, First to go, and protagonist, is Ben Affleck’s Bobby Walker, a sales hot shot, who we’re clearly supposed to feel sorry for, but whose complete ignorance of his impending doom only serves to highlight why the world is in this mess. He’s middle management, a species inherently difficult to like, and when you watch him grimly cruising up to his palatial New England home, pulling his Porsche into the driveway, the audience can easily spot a couple of ways in which the Walkers can tighten their Prada belt.

Cinema 2011 #24: Battle Los Angeles

When watching Battle Los Angeles, an alien invasion action movie with volume cranked up to 11, a certain blink-and-you’ll-miss-it plot point left me feeling somewhat bemused. You see, it’s all about these meteors falling to Earth, without warning, conveniently avoiding all landmasses, yet belly flopping into the beautiful briny sea just off the coast of a number major cities around the world. These meteors turn out to be much meatier than expected, revealing a horde of alien invaders and cache of deadly weapons inside their cosmic cocoons. Suck it, San Francisco. You’re next, New York. Take that, Tokyo. Lie down, London. Die… Dingle. Yes, for some reason, one of these weaponised meteoroids comes crashing down in Fungie’s turf, presumably after their sat nav told them not to take that left turn in Albuquerque. How our Kerry neighbours fare is unfortunately not the path Battle LA chooses to follow, alas, but it’s safe to assume we all die.

However, in Southern California, in a city offering absolutely no strategic advantage to the militarised space invaders (they even get a couple of saucer-like air force ships, speeding across the sky to fast to shoot, worth their 300 point bounty), humanity makes its last stand.  Aaron Eckhart, whose jawline is aptly chiseled, leads the marine team, and while there are no busty civilian boffins, it is made up of every other cliché left in the book; a staff sergeant with a shady past two days from retirement, a by the book wizkid who’s never been in combat, a career-driven female who wasn’t going to have kids, but is now stuck with two sprogs who won't stop wailing, a shy southern virgin, and a sage Nigerian surgeon, who, when realising the peril he’s entered, quips, “Shit, I’d rather be in Afghanistan. “ You and me, both, my friend, you and me, both.

Cinema 2011 #23: Fair Game

On July 14th, 2003, the Bush administration, in an effort to bolster waning public support for the war in Iraq, leaked the name of a CIA operative to The Washington Post to discredit her husband’s criticism of the conflict. Valerie Plame Wilson, wife, mother, spy. The lead up and escalation of this disclosure is examined in this, the latest thriller to join the sub-genre of Iraqi war films currently dominating political cinema, and is directed by The Bourne Identity’s Doug Liman. It stars Naomi Watts as Plame, and Sean Penn as her former-ambassador husband Joseph C. Wilson, whose vitriolic outcries in op-ed articles apparently pushed his wife into the political crosshairs and public spotlight.

The story is, at first, tightly constructed, spending the first half of its running time building up Valerie’s credibility as a CIA agent, sometimes working, sometimes not. Firstly, she’s flitting around Kuala Lumpur, turning hostiles into defecting assets. Then she’s the penetrating analyst, probing deep into the murky world of aluminium tubes and the lynchpin of the CIA’s official position denying an alleged sale of yellowcake uranium to dodgy Iraqi types. Then she’s training immigrants to return home and dish the dirt on Saddam’s strategies. But don’t worry, there’s still time for her to make it home and get that soufflé to rise for a dinner party where the guests’ discussion debriefs the audience of the technical espionage chatter through broad and occasionally distasteful descriptions of the Middle East. All in a day’s work for Val and America, fuck yeah.

Cinema 2011 #22: I am Number 4

You know, sometimes it’s hard being a teenage alien superhero who looks like he should be standing in the doorway of Abercrombie & Fitch. All John wants are some dudes to hang with and some bodacious babes to join him for that midnight paddle. But things are about to take a turn for the worse for this high school hero. Instead of deep meaningful confessions with the Breakfast Club, it’s a lot more running for your life from some skeezy geezers from planet evil and those nasty brutes from the football team. Throw in some multi-syllabic mythological mumblings (word of the day: Mogadorian), a free-spirited honey with an instamatic, and leave to simmer for 109 minutes. Voilà, I am Number 4, the latest slice of sci-fi/fantasy trying to cash in on teenage pockets before the sun fully goes down on the twilight of this trend.

Off the bat, let me first say that 4 is no worse than its vampire counterpart, but it is also not as enjoyable. The Twilight Saga will be around for two more summers, and will hopefully continue to offer up unintentionally hilarious scenes of women being put back in their place and smell-the-fart acting in lieu of romantic longing. Oh joy.

The problem with 4 rests largely in the hands of its director, D.J. Caruso. Coming off the back of reasonably enjoyable thrillers Disturbia and Eagle Eye, he does manage to lend an energetic sense of action to this yarn, eventually, but splits the seams first with some dull and leaden development of the aliens as people. The heavy-handed unraveling of their story is neither interesting nor arresting enough to draw us in, and at times it conveniently draws a veil of ignorance over proceedings; why did the baddies chase 4 and friends all the way to Earth? Why do they have to kill them off in some sort of cosmic paint-by-numbers sequence? Will dying his hair blond actually throw a group of migrant mercenaries with evil scars (obviously, only the goodies get the chiseled features) off the scent? 

Cinema 2011 #21: The Adjustment Bureau

If, as I am occasionally wont to do, you search for fate on thesaurus.com, you’ll be thrown the usual slew of synonymous terms: chance, circumstance, fortune, karma, kismet, predestination, providence. Add to these an unusual one that best sums up the entire plot of George Nolfi’s The Adjustment Bureau - inescapableness. Based loosely on the Philip K. Dick short Adjustment Team, this film tells the story of Matt Damon and Emily Blunt falling madly in love in the wrong place at the wrong time, because that’s not the way the powers that be planned it. It’s a high concept romantic drama about knowing your place in the world, and knowing that others knew it first. Shame then, that this film just doesn’t know what to do with itself.

It all starts very well, with Matt Damon’s senatorial hopeful David Norris on the campaign trail, winning favour as a Kennedy-esque hotshot, only to see it all fall apart after one too many pranks and misdemeanours come to light. Alone, in the gents, he practices his concession speech, but discovers British dancer Elise hiding in the stalls. They swap words, she gives him some advice, and… swoon, they fall in love and fall hard. Given this rather unorthodox rendezvous, it’s one of the major strengths of Bureau that you’ll believe the romance completely, and even be willing the couple on as fate intervenes to tear them apart. Literally.

Cinema 2011 #20: Rango

In 1974, Roman Polanski directed what is arguably the most critically celebrated film of the controversial cinéaste’s career – Chinatown.  An intriguing and plunging film noir, the film perfectly captured the interests and anxiety of a nation in the middle of a crippling oil crisis, reminding a beleaguered audience that you never miss the water till the well runs dry.  Some 37 years later, in a world where credit and burgeoning energy crises are once again rearing their unwelcome heads, contemporary audiences are invited to view a rehash of Polanski’s mystery, starring a computerised chameleon and a host of dust bowl critters. Forget Chinatown, Jake, it’s Rango.

What immediately stands out about this Nickelodeon/Paramount picture is that it’s eye wateringly beautiful to behold, with animation as crisp and perfect as anything Pixar has produced in recent years. It marks the first foray of ILM (Industrial Light & Magic, the effects team behind some of the most celebrated of all special effects in movie history) into computer animation, and they present themselves as a force to be reckoned with. From the first frames, revealing Johnny Depp’s lead to be a daft and cracked chameleon with a penchant for classical acting, to an exciting chase scene as moles fly on bats to the sound of a bluegrass banjo Flight of the Valkyries, through to the vistas of Vegas as a desert oasis, Rango is top notch. In fact, given that Pixar are giving their commercially viable prodigal son a second outing this year, Rango runs straight to the forefront for 2012’s Best Animated Feature come awards season next year.

Cinema 2011 #19: Animal Kingdom

A crime story. That’s what is says under the titles on the film’s poster. A crime story indeed, but a dark and twisted study into the nature of family, loyalty and guilt. This Australian thriller marks the feature debut of writer-director David Michôd, and is a rough retelling of the notorious Melbourne family felons the Pettingills, and their alleged involvement in the Walsh Street Police Shootings of 1988. Uncompromising and frequently bleak, it’s a raw scattershot of the underbelly of the land down under, with a growing tension played out against a sparse script.

The story follows Joshua “J” Cody, a 17 year-old who has just witnessed his mother overdosing on heroin, and some Sheila deciding not to deal with the banker on TV. Played by newcomer James Frecheville, J is an enigmatic lead, quiet and reserved, at times a seemingly dim-witted dolt caught up in a den of serious criminals. He moves into his grandmother Smurf’s home, where she slyly rules the roost, planting ideas in her three shady sons’ heads, and uncomfortably long kisses on their lips.

Cinema 2011 #18: Paul

Spaced: The Final Frontier. That’s sort of the impression you leave with after spending 104 minutes in the presence of Paul, a foul-mouthed extraterrestrial trying to make his way home. In this, the latest vehicle from BFFs turned British Film Favourites Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the titular alien may steal the show, but the heart of the film lies in Pegg and Frost’s exploration of friendship. Certainly a road they’ve tread before, be it slipping away from zombies or packing heat at a village fete. But this time round it’s a road movie. A sci-fi road movie. And the boys have also penned the script themselves, and are without Edgar Wright, their erstwhile directing sidekick, busy carving a niche for himself as Hollywood’s go-to geek.