Inglorious Baster- THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT Review

As a new day dawns after Halloween night, we find ourselves firmly on the road to awards season. The Weinsteins are rubbing their palms together in anticipation and everyone and their mother is trying to look worthy of Oscar glory. In the running for the gold, there's always an indie darling that becomes a favourite before the nominations are announced, and this year's very own Little Miss Sunshine is arguably The Kids Are All Right.

The titular kids are the two children of happily married lesbian couple Jules and Nic. When their eldest reaches her 18th birthday, her younger brother asks that she use her newly grown-up status to put him in contact with the sperm donor who fathered both of them. Their search leads them to Paul, an organic produce restaurateur who comes into their lives at the same time as their parents are on the cusp of a rough patch.

The Oscars tend to pile up around films with oh-so-modern topics, like homosexuality and artificial insemination. In this case, I don't really think you can call The Kids Are All Right Oscar bait as much as you can say that the Academy suicidally chases fare like this upstream like a demented salmon. For a change, we have a film that deserves the hype on account of its strengths and not its themes.

When I speak of its strengths, I'm talking about the performances of the cast, the film's greatest assets by a long stretch. It's unclear about who will be eligible for Best Actress come February, Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, and who will fit into the Best Supporting Actress category, but both of them are shoo-ins for recognition. I'm not as convinced that Mark Ruffalo will get a nod for his likeable turn as Paul, but I think he probably should. He plays a character whose foot is rarely far from his mouth, and he plays the awkwardness with charm rather than false humour.

While the recently broadened field of Best Picture nominations, coupled with the hype this is gathering, it seems likely that the film will sneak into the top ten, but I personally think the Academy is more likely to be blinkered by the quality of the cast rather than swayed by how great the filmmaking is. Credit where it's due, Lisa Cholodenko has written a warm and well-observed script, and she's directed it with panache as well, allowing for a naturalistic mode of storytelling without ever straying into the murky realms of mumblecore.

On the other hand, I feel it's just a tad obvious in places. Particularly, a plot turn that subverts whatever goodwill you had for one particular character is surprising, but only because you thought the film was going to turn out a little more intelligent than that. Kevin Smith, for one, managed to pull off a much better version of the same twist in Chasing Amy. Elsewhere, the representation of a slightly unorthodox home situation is, for some reason, obscured by the smoky lens of a more traditional dysfunctional American family.

It's great to see two actresses like Moore and Bening oscillating between gender roles in the jostling state of play that Cholodenko has set up, but we already knew going into this film that lesbians are people too. You don't have to strive to show them alternately conforming to the roles of a heterosexual mother and father in the way that this film does. It all feels very safe. It's ultra-liberal, disguising itself as conservative, and I don't know why a feel-good film has to try and make absolutely everybody feel good- conservatives aren't going to see a film about a family with two mothers, so why appease them? In this respect, it's pandering, but only in this respect.

One other quibble I had was in how poorly served Mark Ruffalo and Josh Hutcherson are, in the end. Both of them just sort of pale in significance very abruptly, Hutcherson earlier on than Ruffalo. Hutcherson has some great character stuff early on in the film as he interacts with a douchebag best friend, but that just stops after about half an hour. He's the impetus for the plot to start, and without any feeling of his presence thereafter, he's little more than a plot device. It's a shame, because he holds his own with the rest of the highly skilled cast.

I found it easy to like The Kids Are All Right, and it's definitely more substantial than certain other Little Miss Sunshine-lite films that come out around this time of year. The cast are terrific and it's largely very warm and natural. The thing is, I don't believe it's one of the ten best films of the year, as the Oscars will surely contest. I think that it's more like the best of its type this year, a type being favoured by an Academy that's always trying to appear contemporary. It plays the subject matter very safe, but without any reaction to the awards hype, this is a perfectly serviceable indie dramedy that should entertain most viewers.

The Kids Are All Right is now playing in selected cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen The Kids Are All Right, why not share your comments below? If you know what the deal is with the recent rash of artificial insemination comedies, please enlighten me...

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

(Meno)Pause for Thought

It's been a while since I've doubled up films like this in one post, but I've decided I'm going to go back to doing that on films about which I only have a certain amount to say. It helps that both Atom Egoyan's erotic pseudo-thriller Chloe and Catherine Corsini's arthouse drama Leaving deal with similar subject matter- married middle-age women and extra-marital affairs.

Leaving is another film I saw at the Tyneside Cinema a few weeks ago, and I've taken my time writing about it. But on the day this entry is posted, I'll be on my way there to see three more films with limited distribution, so I had to leave you something to read. The film finds one Suzanne Vidal in utter boredom with her upper class family life. Everything changes with the arrival of Ivan, a labourer who's fixing up her house- the two embark on an affair that leaves Mr. Vidal closing his wallet in a temper...

In most respects, I should probably like Leaving more than I actually did. To describe the plot in the barest terms makes it sound slightly like some Brazzers video involving a bored housewife, but it goes without saying that with Kristin Scott Thomas in the lead role, the film is considerably more thoughtful than it sounds. She gives a performance that is really, properly wonderful, and she's evenly matched by the versatile Sergi López, who most will remember as the sadistic officer from Pan's Labyrinth.

The romance between their characters is electric, but the fundamental flaw of the film, for me, was in how difficult it is to empathise with Suzanne. She's not unhappy in her marriage, nor is her husband neglectful- she's just bored. To a point, that's fine, but some of the stuff that happens as a result of her boredom is unforgivable. The last five minutes brings around a terrible twist that undermines any attachment you might have had to the opprobrious Suzanne.

Although Leaving is beautifully shot and very well acted, Catherine Corsini seems so intent on undermining the bourgeois class politics that Suzanne initially upholds that she also undermines everything human. Is it fair that Suzanne's cuckolded husband should cut her off financially just because she cheated on him? Well, yes! Yes, it is, no matter how many times she bemoans her circumstances. Despite some beautiful scenes scattered throughout, the film's ugly conscience ultimately left an unbearably sour taste in my mouth.

Leaving (Partir) is still playing in select cinemas in London, and will be released on DVD later in the year.

Elsewhere, Chloe is a prostitute hired by a genuinely unhappy wife and mother to honey-trap her husband. Catherine believes David is cheating on her after he repeatedly flirts with other women right in front of her, and crucially, deliberately misses his plane home when she's planned a birthday party for him. Chloe reports back as she dallies with David, but Catherine is ultimately drawn into something much deeper.

I'm not familiar with Atom Egoyan's work, but here he speaks softly and carries a big stick, to borrow a broad adage. The score is full of what the DVD subtitles call "soft" and "pensive" music, though this one's anything but soft. It's a psychodrama of an oddly seductive power. Not because its female stars bare all, but because of the palpable charge that the film accumulates throughout. The opening is fairly prosaic, but while it's never massively exciting, it's relentlessly interesting.

Amanda Seyfried is the closest thing to a weak link in the cast, but that's only because her co-stars are Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson. Seyfried is definitely watchable throughout, but every time those two shared the screen, it was fantastic. Their marriage, now deflated of romance, is utterly believable- Neeson's indignation is ambiguous enough that it actually feeds the uncertainty of the plot, and Moore beautifully portrays her character's frustration at how everyone loves a man as he reaches his autumn years while a woman is seen to be past her best.

Chloe makes for a sensual and beguiling drama, even if it goes just a little bit Fatal Attraction in the last act. That's a development I could have done without, but it has a lot to say about the gulf between genders in middle age and while many will appreciate Amanda Seyfried being naked, that's not there to titillate. It manages to be portentous without being pretentious- a mature and powerful film that leaves the viewer with a lot to muse upon afterwards.

Chloe is currently available on DVD and Blu-ray
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If you've seen Leaving or Chloe, why not leave a comment on the films and/or my review? Be sure to let me know if you're perturbed by how much I'm talking about gender lately- my current trip to the Tyneside involves Black Dynamite, so discussion may be lighter from here onwards.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Moore Than A Feeling

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.

I saw a Julianne Moore double feature this week in the form of much-acclaimed romantic drama A Single Man (not to be confused with a certain excellent Coen Brothers film) and multiple-personality horror Shelter.
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Shelter opens on Cara Jessop, a skeptical psychologist, condemning a death row inmate to execution with her conclusion that multiple personality disorder does not really exist. Her father is determined to open her mind, to which end he's referred her to a number of patients suffering from the disorder. The latest is Adam, who violently and physically lapses into the persona of David, a disabled boy who was murdered several years before. As more personalities emerge, Cara discovers that Adam personifies a number of other murder victims, and gradually begins to consider the impossible as the bounds of faith and science are stretched.

Screenwriter Michael Cooney also brought us classics such as Jack Frost (no, not the Michael Keaton one, the other one) and its sequel Jack Frost 2- Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman. So this was never going to be The Exorcist was it? If anything, the script is the very weakest part of Shelter. Cooney has no real flair for dialogue and is often over the top in his impatience to get to the creepier parts of each scene. He also brazenly evokes "ill-conceived Hollywood movies" as a reason for Cara's skepticism, while the film still wears Night of the Living Dead on its sleeve as an influence, with frequent mentions by Cara's hipster brother. There's an obvious debt to Romero as Adam's conditions take a supernatural turn. Paradoxically, this doesn't bring the whole film tumbling down, and I actually liked it, in a weird way.
For one thing, the supernatural side to proceedings has not been telegraphed in the trailers, and this at least distinguishes the film from Cooney's other scripts around the same theme, namely Identity and The I Inside. And the reliably excellent Julianne Moore acts everyone off the screen, to say nothing of how much classier she is than your usual female horror lead. Then again, there's some decent support from Jeffrey DeMunn and John Peakes. The big weak link is Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Adam. See Christian Bale in American Psycho for how well a psychologically unbalanced but good looking bloke can be done- Rhys-Meyers is risible here. He hams it up and fails to bring anything to the table.

Avid readers will notice that my review for Den of Geek has a 3/5 rating affixed, but in hindsight, it's closer to a 2/5. Maybe a 2.5/5. The point is that while Shelter may be horror by numbers, it's genuinely unsettling in places, and doesn't massively outstay its welcome in 112 minutes, a long running time for a horror flick like this. It's certainly not the 1/5 film that the other rather scarce reviews on the web have declared it, even if it's not going to give any hardened horror fans a sleepless night. Moore elevates the script, the direction is even and capable, and the film doesn't rely on sound editing for its scares. The best film containing the phrase "Satan-worshipping mountain witches" that you'll see this year.

Shelter is playing in select cinemas nationwide.
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Elsewhere, in A Single Man, Colin Firth plays George Falconer, an English professor whose partner Jim died eight months prior to the beginning of the film. We find him at the beginning of the day he can't take it anymore and that decides he's going to end his life after just one last day. He goes about saying goodbye to his loved ones, including best friend Charley, and discovering something new in the obsession of a young student. As George goes about his final day, he sees everything for the last time, and thus appreciates it all for the first time.

You may have seen perfume ads that looked like this, but you haven't seen a perfume ad with as much depth as this. At one point, a flashback enables us to see Matthew Goode as Jim, in his pants, in black and white, on a beach. The Hugo Boss logo never arrives, but the visual sensibility of fashion designer-cum-director Tom Ford isn't to be sneered at altogether. For the most part, it really pays off quite well, with milky visuals characterising George's humdrum existence without Jim. And when some of the beauty in life that George has forgotten about shines through, it blushes into colour. Not a subtle device, but a highly effective one. The art direction is also superb, wonderfully evoking the 1960s.

As I've said, it's a handsome film that also has depth, due in no small part to the performances it offers. Colin Firth really should make films like this all the time, because he's clearly a tremendous actor. Fair play to him if he likes those other films, but there's nothing as powerful in Mamma Mia as his constrained fury when he realises that Charley has singularly misunderstood him. Nor does St. Trinian's have anything as gleeful as his deadpan threat to kill the boy who lives next door because he keeps pretending to shoot him every day. A Single Man really showcases his talents in a way I can't remember any other film matching. Julianne Moore holds her own against him, making a comparatively brief but very memorable appearance as a glamorous spinster. She and Firth are what makes the film such a compelling watch.

A Single Man is gloriously shot and oddly life-affirming for a film about a man who decides to commit suicide. It's a bittersweet drama that boasts great performances from its cast and a strong core to keep the more enquiring mind occupied. It's a near overwhelmingly visual debut for Ford, to the point that you almost scoff when numerous characters tell a bereft but well-coiffed George how terrible he apparently looks. Sharp suits and trendy glasses may be the order of the day, but there's just as much substance as style to be found here.

A Single Man comes to DVD and blu-ray on 7th June.
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If you've seen either of these films, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.