Film #26 Black Swan

Must see.
5/5

Film #25 Morning Glory

This is the sort of film you enter into indifferently and come out the other end just bored. Television producer Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams) loses her job on her morning news show due to cut backs. She then manages to wrangle her way to an executive producer job on less successful show called Daybreak. In an attempt to boost the shows profile she hires veteran news reporter Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) who reluctantly takes the job due to a contractual obligation to the network, though makes no secret of the fact he thinks he is above any information the show provides that isn’t hard news, which causes a rift with his co-host Colleen (Diane Keaton). Becky is burdened with the task of somehow turning show’s ratings around in order to impress studio head Jerry Barnes (Jeff Goldblum) enough for him not to pull it off the air all together.

    

What could have been a humorous 30 Rock-esque story of chaos behind the scenes of a television show, unfortunately goes down the route of one woman’s struggle to overcome the odds when everything around her seems to be falling apart. In other words the same tired drivel we’ve all seen before, which wouldn’t have necessarily been bad if the gag rate was more frequent. Instead we have countless scenes McAdams’ Becky running around, making a prat of herself, trying to get her job done while of course learning a thing or two about life and love and how ones job isn’t everything. It’s like the film equivalent of watching a fly bounce around from wall to wall, just waiting for it to land on a piece of shit.

   This sort of stylised tale of female empowerment I’m sure will resonate with some women in the audience, as McAdams runs in slow motion through the streets of New York to some female led R&B song about not letting the world get her down. Hopefully though most will see it for the tortured laugh famine it is. One thing I will praise though is Harrison Ford’s performance, which shows that there is a lot of potential to be tapped into if he just acted his age more often.

2/5

Film #24 Afterschool

Afterschool opens with prep school student Robert (Ezra Miller) watching some unsavoury pornography on his computer. After that he and his room-mates watch a video of two girls fighting that someone had taken on a phone and posted online. Later Robert joins an after school club based around film making. While randomly shooting an empty hallway in his school, he captures and witnesses a terrible event involving two students where he is the only other person on the scene. A perhaps firm comment on how this informational age is desensitising our youth, Afterschool is essentially the story of a young boy trying to grasp the difference between what he sees online and real life. This is evident in a scene when he is alone with girlfriend Amy (Addison Timlin) and tries to emulate with her the porn video he was watching at the beginning of the film.

   The events that happen throughout are shot with an almost emotionless realism. Director Antonio Campos opts to remain a fly on the wall, mostly sticking to one long static shot after another that characters move in and out of. This proves very effective and emulates the emotional distance in which Robert and his friends keep themselves when watching videos online. That’s not to say that the film has no conscience at all. Head teacher Mr Burke (Michael Stuhlbarg) remains a constant voice of reason throughout and represents the difference in ethics between his generation and that of the young stars. Robert himself also shows morality during a phone call to his mother where he tells her he doesn’t like the person he is becoming. This moment is a rare glimpse into his psyche that is usually behind a wall of repressed rage at aimed at everything around him. This tension soon mounts up towards the end of the film though when he finally confronts the source of his antagonism.

   It’s not very often America produces a film with this much unflinching realism. Campos has created a fantastic piece focusing on the trials of growing up in the modern world, an awesome debut.

4/5

Film #23 71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance

People do things all the time that don’t make any sense. This is one of the key ideas put across in 71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance. Also that most other films, particularly in Hollywood, are full of characters whose motivations and actions always make sense and only serve the purpose of the individual’s role in the story.  Michael Haneke wanted to play with this convention by creating a series of scenes involving characters where we don’t know a great deal about them and not everything that happens can be attributed to a specific role.

  

The film opens with text explaining how a young man killed a number of people in a bank one morning seemingly at random. It then pans back a few months and, as the title suggests, proceeds to play out random unrelated fragments of the lives of several characters leading up to the event interspersed with real news footage taken from the time.

   Haneke has a knack for the realistic. His unbridled detail of the mundane is not only compulsively hypnotic, but serves purpose to build a rapport with characters and only make the often shocking events of his films all the more unforgettable. It’s with this in mind that I say that 71 Fragments is his worst film out of the ones I’ve seen. The ideas behind it create an interesting point of discussion, but on screen, the constant shifting between seven or more different characters just makes for an uninteresting highlight real. The only character whose story is really worth following is that of a Romanian boy who illegally immigrated to Austria and his living alone on the streets. The rest of the film darts back and forth too often between characters and locations for any real connection to be felt with the audience. The result of which is mostly confusing, and often boring.

2/5

Film #22 Escape From Alcatraz

A small band of inmates in a high security prison each using their expertise to formulate the perfect escape plan. It’s a shame that this convention is a little stale now, as aspects of Escape From Alcatraz will seem a little tortured twenty-two years on. Luckily the film has a lot more to offer than just a standard break out story.

   Based on the true events of what was possibly the only successful break out of Alcatraz Prison. Clint Eastwood plays Frank Morris, a detainee who with the help of brothers John (Fred Ward) and Clarence Anglin (Jack Thibeau), devise a plan to escape the prison, a feat that no one before them had ever achieved.

   The film mostly follows Eastwood’s character from the time he arrives at the prison up until the escape attempt. The dialogue amongst the characters is minimal, save for a nice array of tough guy one liners. This does well in establishing how many years in prison under the reign of a rather merciless warden (played by Patrick McGoohan) have broken the spirits of these once hardened criminals. It also adds a shroud of mystery to the characters, the film itself could be described as an enigma. Very little is known about the three escapees including their ultimate fates, which itself adds an almost haunting quality to the proceedings. This is an awesome mix of Clint Eastwood film bravado and slow meditative character study which paved the way for many a story like it.

4/5

Film #21 Fish Tank

When watching the first few minutes of Fish Tank you would be forgiven for lumping it in with the usual straight to DVD foul mouthed shit that the British film industry provides on an almost weekly basis. The films central character Mia (Katie Jarvis) exerts her dominance by head butting another girl within the first ten minutes. It doesn’t take long though before the story establishes an emotional depth that most Danny Dyer vehicles could only dream off.

   Mia is fifteen years old and lives on an estate with her boorish mother (Kierston Wareing) and cocky little sister (Rebecca Griffiths). She spends her summer days either just walking the streets or practising her dance moves in one of the empty flats adjacent to where she lives. Her dream is to be a professional hip-hop dancer, not that she will admit it. She mostly hides her thoughts and ambitions behind a wall of insults and abrasiveness. However when her mother brings home a new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender in another brilliant performance), things start to change. For better or worse, his presence slowly brings Mia out of her shell.

  

Directed by Andrea Arnold, this is a sterling combination of realistic story telling with a tale of lower class dreams. Mia isn’t driven to succeed in spite of disability or poor surroundings. In fact she isn’t driven to succeed at all. It’s not until Connor gives her a brief glimpse of self-worth that she finally decides to go to a dance audition. The rest of the time she resigns to the fact that her dreams are just that. The almost total lack of idealism is what makes the film stand out. This isn’t 8 Mile where the main character is going to become a loco hero. The best thing anyone can really hope for is to find their place within their means and achieve as much contentment as possible. By the end of the film, one of the main things Mia had learned is that the only person she can really rely on is herself. Which is a very bleak fact for any fifteen year old to have to face. The idea that the film conveys so perfectly though, is that even if Mia’s future doesn’t look too bright, it is at least in her control.

   4/5