Philomena

After bowing to great acclaim at the Venice and Toronto and film festivals, Stephen Frears’ Philomena has already proved a big hit with international audiences but will be of particular interest to Irish viewers thanks to its examination of one of the more shameful aspects of our recent history. Based on the non-fiction book by Martin Sixmith (Steve Coogan) the film begins when the author loses his job as a government advisor. Compelled by necessity to return to his former profession as a journalist, he stumbles across the story of Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) who was forced to give up her son for adoption fifty years earlier. While he initially sneers at what he deems a mere “human interest” story, he reluctantly agrees to accompany Philomena on her journey to find out what became of her lost child and his cynicism is gradually eroded by her seemingly limitless capacity for forgiveness.

Coogan, whose movie career has stuttered when straying from his tried and tested partnership with director Michael Winterbottom (The Trip, 24 Hour Party People) penned the screenplay with writing partner Jeff Pope, and he’s well suited to the role of the world weary Sixmith. This is really Dench’s film though, and she brings great sensitivity and surprising steel to the role of Philomena, a woman who, despite the hardships she has endured, has not allowed herself to become bitter.

With such a harrowing story at the heart of the film, the injection of some levity is to be welcomed but the script’s broader elements don’t always convince.  When the pair’s quest takes them to America, we’re suddenly in a fish out of water comedy, with Coogan playing the exasperated straight man to Dench’s loveable innocent. At times there’s a hint of condescension in the depiction of Philomena. We are invited to laugh at her wide-eyed wonderment in the face of American culture, her fondness for custard creams, and her utter obliviousness as she recounts the plot of a series of trashy romantic novels in excruciating detail. However, these occasionally ham-fisted attempts at humour are undercut by the less stereotypical aspects of her character. Despite spending years being harangued by the nuns of Roscrea for her supposed sins, she’s not motivated by revenge and refuses to feel guilt for enjoying sex or having a child out of wedlock.

Given the film’s subject matter, it’s difficult not to be moved by Philomena. The barbaric treatment that unwed mothers and their children endured in the Magadalene laundries has left an indelible stain on this country and any film that brings wider attention to this inglorious aspect of our past is to be applauded. If it occasionally stumbles in trying to mix tragedy and comedy, it’s still an admirable attempt to make a crowd pleasing film that takes on such harrowing subject matter. While it sometimes comes across as a cuddlier version of Peter Mullan’s The Magadalene Sisters it also benefits from assured performances from the two leads and Dench in particular is a shoo-in for recognition come awards season.

Evil Dead (2013)

When it comes to remakes of beloved cult horror films it usually pays to keep your expectations low, and when it comes to cult horror the Evil Dead series is more beloved than most. Somewhat encouragingly however, this latest re-imagining comes with the full blessing of the original director and star, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, with Raimi going so far as to handpick his successor behind the camera, newcomer Fede Alvarez. The film-makers have made all the right noises too, promising to pay due respect to the original while delivering a suitably edgy contemporary sheen to the venerable franchise.

The setup will be familiar to any fan of the 1981 film – five friends arrive for a weekend in the creepiest vacation spot this side of the Bates Motel, an isolated cabin in the woods. The twist this time around is that they’re trying to help one of their friends (Mia, played by Jane Levy) to beat her drug addiction. It’s a mildly clever premise, and it allows for a compelling enough reason for the group to stay in the cabin even after Mia starts foaming at the mouth, screaming obscenities and generally acting like a demon from hell. Just withdrawal symptoms, right? When she starts actively trying to kill them, they recall the foreboding tome bound in human skin that they’d been leafing through earlier (not to mention the cellar full of ritualistically sacrificed cats). Needless to say, this was one book they should have left on the shelf. From that point on the gore quotient ramps up considerably with some of the most gruesome scenes I’ve ever witnessed in a mainstream Hollywood movie. It includes characters getting stabbed in the eye with syringes, arms getting sawn off, and gallons (two tanker trucks worth, according to the director) of fake blood. The commendable thing about this is it’s nearly all done with practical effects. There’s only minimal use of CGI, so the actors are genuinely getting drenched in all manner of disgusting fluids, but by the time we reach the finale and it’s literally raining blood, I found myself shrugging.

The first Evil Dead was not without its faults – the acting was fairly crap, the script was minimal, and the creatures were on the creaky side, but what it did have was a truly unique atmosphere, a genuinely uncanny aspect that was created by some combination of the authentically spooky location, the jerky stop-motion effects and Rami’s low-fi directorial flair. And that’s precisely what this remake lacks – the Evil Dead feel. It’s a thoroughly professional, slickly made exercise but ultimately it ends up feeling rather hollow. Alvarez and his crew deserve credit for not taking the easy way out and relying on CGI and star Jane Levy handles all manner of indignities with admirable stoicism, but this is ultimately a rather po-faced and lifeless effort. You would hope that all involved are aware of the irony of remaking a movie about meddling with things better left dead, but on the evidence of this outing they should have left well alone.

The Stag Review

Directed and co-written by the novelist John Butler, The Stag is an eager to please Irish spin on the type of bromantic comedy epitomised by Judd Apatow’s sprawling crew of stoned manchildren.  It’s got excellent production values and a talented home grown cast but is weighed down by weak characterisation and a streak of gloopy sentimentality a mile wide.

Hugh O’Connor plays Fionnan, a placid stage designer who’s about to be married but is more interested in in planning the big day than having one last wild night before he settles down with fiancée Ruth (Amy Huberman). Concerned at her husband to be’s unhealthy obsession with wedding-themed dioramas, she enlists best mate Davan (Andrew Scott) to give him one last weekend to remember.  Along with brother Little Kevin (Michael Legge), his partner Big Kevin (Andrew Bennett) and put upon web designer Simon (Brian Gleeson) the reluctant stag and his best man set off for what they hope is a relaxing weekend hike in Connemara. However, despite their best efforts to evade him, they’re joined on the trip by the bride’s brother, a notorious loose cannon known only as “The Machine.”

As embodied by Peter McDonald (who co-wrote the script), The Machine is not a subtle creation. He’s a boorish, boozy, and thoroughly regressive loudmouth, a direct descendant from the line of jockish id-monsters that includes Sean William Scott’s Stifler and a number of Will Ferrell’s shoutier roles. With his quasi-military slang, habit of mangling people’s names and unenlightened views on homosexuality, The Machine is instantly at odds with the prematurely middle-aged stag party and tensions quickly begin to rise among the outwardly mild-mannered crew.

Best man Davan is, we discover early on, secretly in love with the bride to be after a brief relationship sometime in the past. This memorable fling has left the unfortunate chap secretly yearning for his best friend’s girl for years, an affliction which has left him with a simmering resentment towards Fionnan and eyes that seem to be permanently brimming over with tears. His big moment comes in a needlessly extended campfire singalong where he essays an acapella rendition of “On Raglan Road” so spectacularly maudlin you’d need a heart of stone not to laugh at it. Scott is a fine actor, but he’s saddled here with a character that’s so drippy even Patrick Kavannagh might have told him to crack a smile occasionally. The rest of the unremarkable party are basically insult fodder for The Machine (the two Kevins), one joke creations (the wimpy groom), or burdened with a hastily sketched backstory to give the film some veneer of topicality (Simon has money troubles).

The Stag leaves no stone unturned in its quest for laughs. There’s nudity, drug-use (although with this group of guys, even their drug freakouts are boring) and copious gay jokes but the set-pieces feel like warmed up leftovers from other, better films and McDonald’s constant clowning quickly becomes irritating. By the time we’ve discovered that The Machine might not be such a bad guy after all, endured a stirring self-congratulatory monologue on the inherent brilliance of being Irish, and suffered through yet another sing-along, I’d long since tired of the film’s well-meaning but ultimately rather limp variation on a formula. The Stag is not a wholly dislikeable film but its desire to please all comers leaves it stuck in a sort of cinematic no man’s land, too safe to work as an outrageous comedy and  too shallow and sentimental to satisfy dramatically.

August Osage County Review

At 18 nominations and counting, Meryl Streep is in a class of her own when it comes to the Oscars. One of these days she ought to do the decent thing and take herself out of contention, but until then the advent of awards season goes hand in hand with the arrival  of another mantelpiece threatening role for the veteran performer. At this point it doesn’t actually matter if the film itself is any good or not (of the nine movies she’s been nominated for since 1995, only Spike Jonze’s Adaptation is really worthy of revisiting), it’s simply a delivery system for ‘The Performance’. And so it is in August: Osage County, where Streep is less an actress than a sort of tactical nuclear device. Just point her in the general direction of the set and hope the rest of the cast don’t get caught in the blast radius.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Tracy Letts, which comfortably breached the three hour mark on stage, August: Osage County has by necessity been somewhat truncated for the screen and now comes in at a comparatively sprightly 120 minutes. Letts has previously enjoyed a fruitful working relationship with William Friedkin, who adapted early plays Bug and Killer Joe with blackly comic verve, but here he’s working with John Wells, a TV vet who has failed to demonstrate any real personality as a maker of feature films. Unfortunately the lack of a strong guiding hand is readily apparent  in the bland final product.

The film is set in the “hot, flat nothing” of Oklahoma, where the various members of the Weston family convene after their father, a once successful poet and currently successful drunk, goes missing. Streep plays Violet, the cancer-stricken matriarch who swallows pills by the handful and dispenses withering insults in between drags on an ever present cigarette. She’s a poisonous creation and the actress pulls out every trick in the book to do justice to the role, slurring and sneering, alternately raging and pitiful, her venomous gaze hidden behind oversized sunglasses. Julia Roberts has the second largest part as eldest daughter Barb, but apart from a memorable third act explosion her main role is to look tight-lipped and disapproving while Streep chews up the scenery. She doesn’t stand a chance poor thing.

In the rare moments when Streep is not doing something outrageous, the remainder of the overextended cast jostle desperately for screen time with most of them struggling to make any impression at all. Julianne Nicholson hits a nice note of quiet desperation as stay at home daughter Ivy, and Chris Cooper has a weary dignity as a long-suffering uncle horrified by the family he’s married into, but most of the rest can be summed up by a single adjective. You’ve got Ewan McGregor (whiny), Abigail Breslin (whiny junior), Benedict Cumberbatch (mumbly), Juliette Lewis (shouty) and Dermot Mulroney (sleazy).

There are have been some perfunctory attempts made at opening the play up visually, but aside from a few driving scenes we are mostly stuck in the ancestral home, a rambling pile that’s perpetually sunk in shadow. It’s an unpleasant, claustrophobic experience and despite the significant reduction in length from the stage version you feel every minute of the two hours. Ultimately the film plays out as a struggle between the populist instincts of Wells and Letts’ darker preoccupations. Their warring approaches are summed up by the film’s closing moments, where the original play’s pitch black denouement is followed by a needlessly optimistic coda, and the ridiculous end credits, in which cheerful sepia-tinted photos of this fatally dysfunctional family play out to the strains of the Kings of Leon in twangy country-rock mode. It’s an absurd capper to a misguided project which will go down as another forgettable footnote to Streep’s remarkable Oscar run.

Carlos Tevez

Carlos Tevez has always wanted to be loved, but he doesn’t exactly make it easy. After seven years in England the emotional Argentinian has played for three clubs, picked up a hat-trick of league titles, and adorned the Premier League with a combination of skill, tenacity and explosive goalscoring ability that few players in the country can match. It says something however that most fans’ abiding memories of Tevez will be unpleasant ones. Only at West Ham is he still unambiguously adored, and only then because he didn’t stay long enough for things to turn sour. His barnstorming performances in the back half of the 2006/2007 season were a thing of wonder, with his goals and innate will to win almost single-handedly dragging the club out of the relegation zone. He capped it all with a goal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR_gevPHKbU)
at Manchester Utd on the final day which officially secured the Hammers’ safety and left East London a club legend after less than a year there.

The Man Utd fans had liked what they’d seen in that match and he was loved there too at first. After joining on a two year loan, he finished his first season at Old Trafford with a League and Champions League medal and the unquestioning worship of fans who thrilled to his attacking interplay with Wayne Rooney (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e1i1b5aeXI)
and Cristiano Ronaldo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUWCOI7fMUM) , a trio they christened “The Holy Trinity”.

His second season at Utd was to prove less happy. So much so that he caused a rare fan revolt against Sir Alex Ferguson. As Utd secured their 18th league title with a tepid nil-nil draw against Arsenal, a chorus of boos were directed at the home bench when Tevez was substituted on the 67th minute. Having not exactly taken to the subtler charms of new signing Dimitar Berbatov, whose languid playing style made him more or less the anti-Tevez, the Utd support greeted the final whistle with chants of “Argentina” and “Fergie sign him up”. While the manager publicly backed the player, Tevez bemoaned what he perceived as his poor treatment in a series of interviews and the club and his advisers were unable to reach a deal. Carlos, ever dramatic, did the unthinkable and signed for City.

Like a spurned lover, the Utd faithful feigned indifference. Ah, but he was never that good anyway was he? City on the other hand could hardly believe their luck, here was one of most exciting stars in the league, a jewel in the crown of a glittering Utd attack, and he’d rejected the old enemy for the noisy neighbours. They reacted with unrestrained glee and and the infamous “Welcome to Manchester” billboard. Small time, the Utd fans said.

Tevez made an thrilling start to his career with City, finishing that season with both the Fan’s and Player’s Player of the year award and being made club captain by manager Roberto Mancini. The City fans swooned, this time it would be a love that lasted forever. By Christmas 2010 though the old demons were stirring, and Tevez submitted a transfer request. There was a list of familiar complaints – homesickness, an breakdown in relations with senior figures at the club – but City refused to budge and the player eventually reaffirmed his commitment to the cause.

Then in 2011, the Bayern Munich incident. With City two nil down against the German club, there were angry scenes on the sidelines when Tevez allegedly refused to come on as a substitute. An incandescent Roberto Mancini claimed he would never play for the club again and the player was placed on gardening leave while City searched for a suitor to take him off their hands. With no takers, Tevez returned after three months and issued a grovelling apology. Across Manchester Alex Ferguson gloated, and the striker’s absence seemed to have already done the damage to City’s league tilt but on the most dramatic final day of the season ever he helped them to secure their first title in four decades. Even in victory Tevez managed to antagonise, gleefully waving a cardboard sign with the legend “RIP Fergie” at the club’s opentop parade. Another apology followed.

He would stay one more season at City, and there would still be great performances and goals, but it’s difficult to argue that he’s been worth the trouble. With an unconfirmed transfer fee of £47m and millions more frittered away on lost wages the sense was that Tevez’s turbulent affair with City had to come to an end. He joins a Juventus side whose fans will be hoping that this unhappy wanderer is finally ready to settle down, but it might not be too long before Tevez is breaking hearts once again.

Good luck Carlos. Let’s try to stay friends.

Frances Ha Review

For a such a deliberately low-key project, Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha has attracted more than its fair share of tabloid attention, chiefly due to the fact that the director and his much younger leading lady Greta Gerwig are now a couple. The pair met on the set of Baumbach’s last picture, the mid-life crisis mopeathon Greenberg, where Gerwig provided a welcome contrast to Ben Stiller’s defiantly unlikeable title character. They subsequently began writing together and Frances Ha, shot guerrilla-style on a modest budget, is the first fruit of their collaboration (they also co-wrote the director’s next, currently untitled film). For Gerwig it offers a well-deserved shot at a starring role, and for Baumbach it’s a chance to bounce back after the mixed critical and commercial reaction to his last two directorial efforts.

Shot in beautiful, burnished monochrome by cinematographer Sam Levy, Frances Ha immediately recalls Woody Allen’s Manhattan in its look and Lena Dunham’s Girls (that show’s Adam Driver also turns up in a supporting role) in its focus on the arty, aimless inhabitants of young New York. It’s a sunnier, more optimistic creation than either of its illustrious precursors however. Yes,  it’s yet another tale of millennial arrested development but Gerwig’s Frances is an original, a gawky wide-eyed goofball with a talent for embarrassing herself, an uncool girl in a very cool world.  Gerwig is a gifted physical comedian and there are several inspired moments of slapstick here, including a hilarious scene where Frances engages her reluctant roommate in some slightly too vigorous “play-fighting”. The story may be a slight one – Frances tries to make it as a dancer, has rent troubles, falls out with her best friend – but the film’s chief pleasures lie not in any plot machinations but in its delineation of the minor moments of triumph and disaster that make up your mid-twenties. In interviews Gerwig has talked about attempting to capture a feeling of “melancholy joy” and in its best scenes – a disastrous dinner party, the least romantic trip to Paris ever – the film toes that line perfectly.

With its barely there plot and slender 86 minute running time Frances Ha does feel somewhat insubstantial, but in a summer where the blockbusters have been even more leaden than usual its throwaway charms make for a refreshing change. After a series of acclaimed supporting turns and one failed attempt to go mainstream in Russell Brand’s disastrous Arthur remake, Greta Gerwig has found the perfect vehicle (even if she did have to write it herself) for her endearingly old-fashioned screen presence. Her creative input has clearly reinvigorated Baumbach too, who delivers his most purely enjoyable film yet and easily his best work since 2005’s The Squid and the Whale.