Wednesday, 31 October 2012
FILM REVIEW: BACHELORETTE
Hopscotch Films
Now Showing
Odious though they may be, comparisons are also inevitable specially when it come to films. So it will be for Bachelorette, which will be compared to Bridesmaids (and suffer as a result), coming so soon down the aisle as it does after that 2011 box office smash.
Never mind that director Leslye Headland has adapted her own off-Broadway play which was in existence before Kristen Wiig caught bridal fever and lost her mind as a result.
Here the bridesmaids duties (and requisite descent into madness) fall to not one but three women: Regan (Kirsten Dunst), Gena (Lizzy Caplan), and Katie (Isla Fisher), high school friends who are reunited for the wedding of Becky (Rebel Wilson), the fourth member of their high school clique, the so-called B-Girls.
It's Regan, the Maid of Honour, who takes the impending nuptials the hardest. Blessed with good looks, a doctor boyfriend (whom we never see), and her own career working with "cancer kids", Regan can't believe that Becky (known at school as Pigface) is getting married before she is.
But Regan is also a control freak which means she works hard to suppress her rage in order to pull-off the best wedding possible for her friend. That is until she reunites with Gena, who flies in from Los Angeles and immediately into the path of high school love, Clyde (Adam Scott), and Katie, a ditzy retail assistant who's easily led astray by coke fiend Gena, and her controlled facade is soon ripped open.
As is Becky's wedding dress during some drunken post-bachelorette party foolery, setting the three ladies off into the New York night in the hopes of repairing the dress; an all-night odyssey which will involve a strip bar, a suicide attempt and a lot of opening of olds wounds and resentments in between, with only 12-odd hours to fix the dress, and their relationships, before the orchestra strikes up 'Here Comes The Bride'.
Not as uproariously funny as Bridesmaids, or its male cousin The Hangover (though there is a group of bucks, headed by a deliciously despicable James Marsden playing against type), Bachelorette does have its moments, courtesy of the comedic skills of Isla Fisher, and the breakout performance of Lizzy Caplan (who you may or may not remember as the Goth chick friend of Lindsay Lohan in 2004's Mean Girls).
Caplan's Gena, nursing a broken heart since high school and attempting ever since to dull the pain with booze, drugs and one night stands, gives Bachelorette a much darker tinge than either of those other aforementioned comedies. And refreshingly for a bridal-themed comedy, it doesn't end happily so much as all's well that ends well - for now.
And even if Bachelorette doesn't make for a great night out, it will make for a good night in (on DVD) with your girlfriends.
Monday, 29 October 2012
FILM REVIEW: END OF WATCH
Roadshow Films
Now Showing
Just as a successful police pairing means being able to rely on your partner, the success of the buddy cop film rests almost entirely on the chemistry between said buddies. Be it Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the Lethal Weapon series, or Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street, you need to know that the other guy has got your back.
Thankfully for writer-director David Ayer, his two leads – Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena, both in excellent form – have chemistry to burn in End of Watch, a fly-on-the-wall police procedural where the two actors are rarely seen without the other and whose camaraderie is as authentic as it is winning.
Brian Taylor (Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Pena) are officers in the LAPD, patrolling the streets of south-central Los Angeles in their squad car and always on the lookout for some dangerous action: missing elderly mother, meh. Meth labs and drug cartels? Bring it on! They're a gung-ho duo who take just as much fun (perhaps more) in their work as they do pride, which may rankle some of their colleagues (including David Harbour, Frank Grillo, and a far-from-Ugly Betty America Ferrera) but more often than not gets the job done.
Taylor, for whatever reason (it is never really explained), has taken to shooting their daily patrols on his digi-cam, and has wired himself and Zavala up with mini-cameras so he doesn't miss one bit of the action.
This also captures the fun, frank and at times personal conversations between the two cops, and whether riffing on or ribbing each other, or opening up about their relationships (Zavala has a wife and his first child on the way; Brian has started dating someone special, played by Anna Kendrick), the pair are amusing, engaging and highly likeable.
Not so taken with the duo is the local chapter of a Mexican drug cartel. When Taylor and Zavala cross their paths one too many times, upending drug shipments and a people smuggling operation, a hit is placed on the cops making for an already dangerous life on the beat downright deadly.
The entirety of End Of Watch is shot in a hand-held manner which ultimately proves to be as distracting as it is annoying, not just because of the shakiness of the cinematography (Oz critic David Stratton must have had stroke while watching this), but because Ayer dispenses with the rules of his own conceit not too long into the film.
There are point-of-view shots which can only have been filmed by someone who either does not have a camera (although a lot of people in EOW, including the crims, tend to: the YouTube generation?) or who simply isn't there. No doubt intended to give the pair's life on the beat an immediacy and authenticity, the fly-on-the-wall approach as executed here proves more irritating than enlightening.
But that's a minor quibble. What is impressive about End Of Watch, and the reason you should see it, are the central performances. Gyllenhaal and Pena are a winning combination whose chemistry overcomes any cop film cliches or shaky-cam issues. Whether busting crims or each others' balls, they make for an arresting pair.
Thursday, 25 October 2012
FILM REVIEW: ARGO
Roadshow Films
Now Showing
Truth, as they say, is often stranger than fiction. And in Argo, Ben Affleck's third and most confident outing as a director, the truth – that of the clandestine CIA goings-on behind the American-Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-1980 – is also far more entertaining than it has any right to be.
Argo is also gripping as it plays fast (and only slightly loose) with events which unfolded following the Iranian revolution where Iran's leader, the Shah, was replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini. The Shah fled to the U.S. and in protest, Iranians (mostly students) vented their anger on the American Embassy, storming the premises and setting the hostage crisis in motion which would continue for 444 days.
But not before six Embassy employees (character actors Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall and Scoot McNairy among them) managed to 'slip out the back' and seek refuge in the home of the Canadian ambassador, Ken Taylor (Victor Garber).
Affleck captures these events so perfectly it's almost as though he and his cinematographer (Rodrigo Prieto) were there, making it difficult to discern what is actual footage from the time and what has been recreated. In fact, the period detail of the film – the clothes, the cars, and the hair, so much hair – is excellent; enough to effectively transport us back to 1979 but not so as to draw attention to itself.
The CIA's initial plan to get the six Americans out of Tehran? Bicycles. They'll deliver them to the Canadian Embassy and the six will simply pedal across the Turkish border to freedom.
But CIA exfiltration expert, Tony Mendez (Affleck, impressively sporting long '70s locks and beard), has another idea, the better bad idea if you will: he'll fly into Tehran posing as a Canadian film producer with plans to shoot a science fiction film in the country's sandy surrounds; the six fugitives will be issued with Canadian passports and fly out with Mendez as members of his film crew.
To successfully pull-off this subterfuge, Mendez heads to Hollywood and enlists the help of one-time ace producer, Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin in fine, cantankerous form), and Oscar-winning make-up artist, John Chambers (John Goodman); the trio settling on the screenplay for Argo, a Star Wars clone which would seem perfectly suited to being filmed in the Middle East.
These Hollywood sequences provide Argo with a great deal of humour, and perhaps lulling us into a false sense of security, for once Mendez touches down in Tehran and the operation is set in motion, Affleck ratchets up the tension to almost unbearable levels: the third act of the film makes for some of the most gripping cinema of 2012.
The ending may never be in doubt (even if you don't know all that much about the Iranian hostage crisis - or this aspect of it which was revealed when CIA documents were declassified in 1997 - you can bet Hollywood doesn't make self-congratulatory films about the deaths of six Americans), but as they also say, it's the journey that matters, and Argo is a ripping yarn, gripping (and amusing) in the telling.
Tuesday, 23 October 2012
FILM REVIEW: DREDD 3D
Icon Film Distribution
Now Showing
When the trailer for Gareth Evans' high-energy actioner, The Raid, was launched online late 2011-early 2012, all those involved with Pete Travis' Dredd must have let out a collective 'oh, shit!' For The Raid and Dredd share a similar premise – good guys fighting bad guys in a tower block in lock down – and while that similarity is more coincidence than by design, the latter film suffers as a result.
Well, if you've seen The Raid, that is (and if you haven't, you should: it's available on DVD now). Not only does Evans' film benefit from being the first released, but its handling of the concept is far superior to Dredd in every way (except visually).
Dredd is set in the future where society has collapsed, America is now a police state, and justice is meted out by the Judges: judge, jury and (often) executioners rolled into one who patrol the cities on suped-up motorcycles and come fully-equipped with an arsenal of weapons.
And Judge Dredd (Karl Urban, presumably: we only ever see his mouth and chin for he never removes his helmet) is the best of them. Inscrutable, incorruptible and personality-free, Dredd takes his work seriously. He's none-too-pleased, however, when he's assigned to babysit a rookie, Anderson (Olivia Thirlby, unrecognizable from her role in Juno); an underachieving cadet from the Academy but promoted to potential Judge-dom due to her mind-reading abilities.
And those abilities will come in handy when the pair are trapped inside a tower block (the misleadingly named Peach Trees) and targeted for termination by the city's reigning queen of crime, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey, a.k.a Evil Keira Knightley, and here looks like Keira's Domino character fallen on seriously hard times).
Ma-Ma issues a fatwa on the Judges to prevent them leaving Peach Trees with one of her minions in custody. He'll inevitably talk if taken back to police headquarters for interrogation so Ma-Ma declares it open season. Cue The Block, in reverse and with high-powered weapons as the tools of trade.
Based on the comic books – which were given a less than spectacular cinema-outing in the 1995 Judge Dredd, where it was Sylvester Stallone donning the helmet and badge – I'm led to believe that Dredd is a dark and bloody satire on the current state of the world. And Travis' version (penned by Alex Garland, based on characters created by Carlos Ezquerra) is definitely bloody.
But if it is satire than I missed the point. I certainly didn't discern any wit flying amid the bullets and the bodies. And Urban's one-liners fall as flat as some of Ma-Ma's victims (seriously, anyone could have played Dredd so robotic is the performance).
As you can no doubt guess, I wasn't a fan of Dredd. There is a drug in this dystopic future known as Slo-Mo, designed to create for its users the illusion of time moving slowly, and deployed specifically by the filmmakers for visual effect (which is one of the film's few redeeming features; I'll admit there are moments that are visually arresting). But I was hoping at some point they'd introduce another drug – Fa-Fo, or Fast Forward – so I could hurry up and get the hell out of there.
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