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.

Travolting

Films like The Exorcist and The Evil Dead have been appalling and entertaining audiences for decades, and in cinemas this week are two films that are similarly revolting, albeit in entirely different ways- the harrowing awards darling, Precious, and a big dumb Travolta vehicle, From Paris With Love.

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.
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Taken director Pierre Morel collaborates with Luc Besson once again to bring us From Paris With Love, which matches James Reece, a US ambassador's assistant who's complicit with the CIA, with a brash twatbag of an American spy called Charlie Wax. Reece has to keep an eye on Wax's methods while carrying a vase full of coke and trying to stop the bad guys. Who are the bad guys? Why, terrorists, of course! Terrorists who plan to do very bad things to America, a country it's entirely easy to stop caring about when their top man in this film is played by John Travolta.

John Travolta isn't funny. Hell, I'm pretty sure he's barely capable of actually acting these days, but "John Travolta isn't funny" is a much more potent synopsis of From Paris With Love. To expand on his not being funny, you'll find he's once again in Taking of Pelham 123 mode, saying "motherfucker" as much as he can, because someone somewhere obviously thinks that's funny. It's not, and the in-jokes about the Royale with cheese are pretty soul-destroying too. It's like he's constantly nostalgic for times when he was in better films than this, or Old Dogs, or Battlefield Earth. He must be REALLY missing Quentin Tarantino.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers is as obscured by Travolta's hammy acting and sheer volume as many of his recent co-stars have been. But he gamely trundles from shootout to shootout, and is embroiled in the most token love-interest story you'll see in an action film this year. This isn't dumb fun, it's just dumb, and hateful to boot. For instance, one typically bullet-riddled scene has a shootout with a gang of Asian bodyguards in an apartment block, with a nervous Reece following a wave of destruction left by Travolta's accomplished douchebag, Wax. "How many more of them?", Rhys Meyers enquires. "By the last census, around a billion", Travolta replies. Doesn't a little bit of joking about racial cleansing go a long way?
Wax is seen in one scene to leave litter on a park bench even though there's a bin not two feet away. The shot lingers even after Wax has gone out of it, and for a moment I wondered if it was a clever admonition of American wastefulness. In fact, between this and Taken, I have to wonder if Morel isn't actually executing some massive feat of irony and parodying American action cinema in his films by centring them around Americans and making them as xenophobic as possible without incurring charges of racial hatred. I'd actually be intrigued if I could stomach another viewing of this tripe. Any intended irony fails here because Taken was at least entertaining in its daftness, but this is just dumb and hateful, as opposed to just dumb fun.

Then I turned my Media student head off, because From Paris With Love doesn't warrant deserve such consideration. And even if it did, it's not entertaining enough to carry any undercurrent of satire. There's nothing so clever in this crass and xenophobic effort from Morel, and the character of Charlie Wax is simply revolting. Travolting, if you will. Not funny, not entertaining, but at least it's brief. And for the latter at least, merci, Pierre Morel. Now go away.
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A much more subdued film than that is Lee Daniels' Oscar darling, Precious, and sadly its unwieldy full title, (take what you've got already and add Based on the novel Push by Sapphire) gives you a fair idea of the film itself. In Harlem, 1987, an obese and illiterate black girl called Claireece "Precious" Jones is pregnant with her second child by her own father. Her spiteful mother resents her husband's preference for her daughter and constantly abuses her, both verbally and physically. When Precious is drummed out of her old school, she goes to an alternative one where she's brought into contact with the caring Ms. Rain and has the chance to turn her life around.

Early on, the film put me in mind of an episode of Doctor Who from a few years ago, where John Simm's Master snarks about how our fugitive heroes- David Tennant, Freema Agyeman and John Barrowman- are "ticking every demographic box, so well done on that." In tackling issues of race, family, young pregnancy and poverty in a coming-of-age tale, it ostensibly seems like Lee Daniels and screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher were very much on the awards season campaign trail. It's certainly gotten a lot of recognition thus far, with Mo'Nique one of the few absolute locks for an acting win this Sunday at the Academy Awards. I don't disagree that it's worthy of recognition for its performances, but I think it's curious that Mo'Nique and Gabourey Sidibe are the ones who have been marked out as the best.
Mo'Nique is certainly quite good in it, but her character felt like it was drawn in broad strokes to me, and I never really felt Precious' mother was anything but a one-dimensional character, even towards the end of the film. She's too well-performed to be something out of panto, but she's not vile enough to appear as anything more than a particularly riled guest on Jerry Springer. That's not the actress' fault, as she copes rather well with what I feel was a weak script. Elsewhere, Gabourey Sidibe doesn't make the strongest debut here, but then she's not an actress- again, it's not her failing but Hollywood's that there aren't trained actresses working of the build required for Precious. Both are capable with what could easily descend into melodramatic caricatures, but I felt the really great performances came from Paula Patton and Mariah Carey.

Yes, that Mariah Carey. I understand the lack of awards recognition there, as she's only in it for a bit and she's also Mariah Carey, but she makes a surprisingly strong impression in the screentime she has. Patton is instantly endearing as Ms. Rain, and I really felt she elevated each scene she was in. That might seem somewhat incongruous with my criticisms of Sidibe and Mo'Nique, but in the scenes where those two were together I was always very aware I was watching performances rather than people, and there's none of the realism in that stuff that a film like this requires to work. And that's true of a fair bit of Precious. It's not mawkish, but it is cloying, really striving to evoke a reaction from its audience rather than letting it occur naturally. It's all the more jolting when the film lapses into loud and bright fantasy sequences- as bad as her life is, it's as if Daniels felt the audience needed those breaks from bleakness more than Precious.

Even with its overriding bleakness and desperate tugging at your heartstrings, Precious isn't a bad film, but it's not enjoyable either. Is it worthy of Best Picture? I think not, but there have certainly been worse films nominated in previous years. Aside from The Blind Side, which I haven't seen yet but suspect may be worse, I'd say it's the weakest of the ten nominated this year. Oscar glory isn't the only reason you ever go to see anything though, and the film remains an honourable but overwrought endeavour to bring important social issues to greater public awareness. Think Slumdog Millionaire with a more ambiguous ending, or Juno with a fuckton more misery. I don't see why anyone would want to see a film this depressing, but that's not to say that you shouldn't see it, full stop. The extent of performance on show left me feeling unaffected by the bleak stuff. If for whatever reason you want to see a film that Oprah Winfrey heartily endorses, make it The Princess and the Frog.
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If you've stomached either From Paris with Love or Precious, why not share your comments below? For me, a viewing of Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland by Disney is imminent, so that review and some awards-speak will be up as the weekend goes on.

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