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Cinema Voyage - Akito Hirata, Filmhunter

The Killer Inside Me

August 15th 2010 14:12

Kate Hudson and Casey Affleck put on their film noir faces

There’s a strong and immediate temptation to point out the shocking violence in Michael Winterbottom’s latest offering, The Killer Inside Me. It features some sickeningly protracted scenes of bloody brutality that had grown men sitting beside me in the cinema squirming with queasiness.

Adapted from Jim Thompson’s 1952 classic of the same title, The Killer Inside Me is a disturbing and studied look at the psyche of serial killer Lou Ford. A trusty policeman in an early 50s small town in Texas, Lou (Casey Affleck) reveals complex psychological workings that remain incomprehensible even by the time the credits roll. Affleck certainly gives a solid performance. We’re forcibly aligned with him from the outset of the film to its final moments; he’s in every scene. It’s an uncommon device, one where we as the audience are afforded the opportunity to develop both an unwanted fascination for and also an intense disgust with his vile character. Yet he remains largely inaccessible. We see what he does, but never fully understand why.

It doesn't help either that, in every case, the violence is visited upon a woman. Lou’s love interests, Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson, come with us for the ride. Neither are particularly impressive. With the exception of Sin City, Alba’s usually declined prostitute roles, so when asked why she signed onto this project, she responded with a vague "I-don’t-really-know". Well, I don’t know either. Playing what is essentially a punching bag for Lou doesn’t do her any favours. Hudson is used in a similarly shocking fashion.

In the end, we are left wondering whether the violence is excessive, gratuitous or whether it is a justified way of telling the story. In addition, Winterbottom’s unpolished reimagining of the book means that the small town noir feel to the film is somehow lacking too. Although The Killer Inside Me brings to light some of the book’s qualities, it does not really enhance the reading experience and we are left with a hollow portrait of a superficially charming killer who executes his victims in horrific and detailed ways.

3 STARS

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Posted By: Akito Hirata - Category: Drama

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The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

July 11th 2010 10:02

R-Patz and Stewart frolic amongst the flowers

The marketing juggernaut for Eclipse takes great pains to remind viewers that in this episode of The Twilight Saga “one girl must discover her destiny”. That girl is Isabella Swan, and she’s been treading a well-worn romantic path now for an unnecessarily long time, implicating vampire Edward Cullen and werewolf Jacob Black in her constantly messy and unclever love triangle.

With David Slade at the helm of this instalment, Eclipse was meant to restore the franchise’s energy that had been sucked out by its uniformly hated predecessor New Moon. “These violent delights have violent ends / And in their triumph die, like fire and powder / Which, as they kiss, consume”. With the brooding voice-over of Bella Swan quoting Shakespeare, audiences were thrust into the atmospheric two-hour-long mope that is New Moon. Slade’s take on Stephanie Meyer’s third book achieves much of the same, if not a more sophisticated flirtation between annoying indecisiveness and embarrassingly obvious predictability. That the film literally ends where it should have begun (if we go by New Moon’s cliff-hanger of “will you marry me?”) validates the overbearingly sluggish narrative.

Little improvement on their acting skills is shown by the Twilight trio, who’ve now all achieved mega stardom. Taylor Lautner’s commitment to his werewolf persona quickly turns silly, while Robert Pattinson is just a bore to watch, plain and simple. Kristen Stewart, who’s often polarised the critics when it comes to her command of acting, finally confirms that she cannot command ongoing interest in her whiny character. It doesn’t help either that the icy mountain top ranges, upon which the complications of the central love triangle intensify, look at once cheesy and cheap.

Slade manages to stay loyal to the book by recapturing the past lives of certain members of the Cullen family. However, the result is strangely jarring. The soundtrack is similarly disappointing and misused, with the only way to integrate Muse’s Neutron Star Collision is by having some peripheral random remarking “Oh...I like this song”. Terrible. Just terrible.

1 STAR

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Posted By: Akito Hirata - Category: Drama

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I Am Love

June 28th 2010 07:07

Tilda Swinton seated as the matriarch of the Recchi family

There is no denying the tremendous beauty of Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love. From the stunning Art Deco home of Tilda Swinton as matriarch to the beautiful outfits she is dressed in, the film’s rich visual style seems close to perfection.

The visual feast that Guadagnino presents us with doesn’t negate or outweigh the emotional resonance of the film’s tale. “Happy? Happy is a word that makes one sad,” remarks Betta (Alba Rohrwacher) in a pensively solemn voice. She is the only daughter to Swinton, who plays Emma, the wife of a powerful Milan industrialist, Tancredi Recchi (Pippo Delbono). Betta is speaking to one of her two brothers, Edo (Flavio Parenti), who co-inherits the family business with his father. The Recchi family is a regal one. Their wealth is matched only by their style and steadfast ability to keep up appearances.

Guadagnino’s focus is naturally on Emma, the stunningly elegant wife and mother who binds the Recchi household. Aided by her immaculate dresses and Art Deco surrounds, Tilda Swinton embodies the stifled role magnificently. She is introduced to a chef and friend of Edo’s, Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), who has dreams of starting a restaurant with Edo. Escaping the lovelessness of her marriage to Tancredi, she spirals into a dangerous affair with Antonio.

There’s an amazingly poignant and subtle quality to Swinton’s performance. She depicts Emma as both strong and terribly sad. Originally born in Russia, her identity is now almost exclusively defined by her assimilation into the Recchi family. Crucially, we only learn this fact midway through the film. There is, of course, no happy end to the betrayal of her husband.

When the climax hits, there is only a shell of a woman left. Her devastation and sense of awakening is at once made clear through a most affecting, operatic score. The end truly is Guadagnino’s ode to grand Italian cinema. It’s a story and film which, despite being set at the turn of this century, could easily belong to any bygone era.

4.5 STARS

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Posted By: Akito Hirata - Category: Drama

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The Burning Plain

April 21st 2010 12:22

Charlize Theron as Sylvia, a woman too afraid to look into the past

Back in 2000, Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu struck it big time with his directorial debut Amores Perros, which in English roughly translates to Love’s a Bitch. This was the first instalment in what Inarritu now calls his Death Trilogy, completed with 21 Grams (2003) and Babel (2006). All three films were met with critical acclaim and all three were written by Guillermo Arriaga

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Welcome

March 30th 2010 08:18

Vincent Lindon guiding Bilal's swim across the English Channel

There’s an inherent irony in the title of French director Philippe Lioret’s latest impressive effort Welcome. It’s about the grim struggle of illegal immigrants in Europe, the plight of their experience, and how they are anything but welcome

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Winged Creatures

March 25th 2010 08:39

Dakota Fanning tackles this challenging role with success

Winged Creatures revolves around one awful event: a man walks into a diner and shoots at random. Lives are fractured; the hapless victims do what little they can to reconcile themselves to the shocking attack

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Disgrace

March 24th 2010 02:30

John Malkovich with South African newcomer Jessica Haines

Few places in the world can arouse as strong a sense of foreboding in modern consciousness as South Africa. In Disgrace, Australian director Steve Jacobs has presented us with a harrowing exposition of the sum of contemporary South Africa’s misfortunes – its corruption, racism, and crime – in a faithful adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s Booker Prize winning novel of the same title

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Synecdoche, New York

March 24th 2010 02:24

They're all the leads of their own stories - Caden Cotard

Be excited. Very few filmmakers can pull off nonsensical, postmodern delight as well as Charlie Kaufman, and his first directorial effort Synecdoche, New York is no exception. Having written films including Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, it’s little wonder that Kaufman has taken full visionary charge of this latest ingenious piece of metafiction

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Posted By: Akito Hirata - Category: Drama

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Elegy

March 24th 2010 02:16

A romance doomed from its inception

There is very little cathartic reward by the end of Isabel Coixet’s emotionally draining drama Elegy, and unfairly so, with a running time of nearly two hours

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Review - Traitor

December 14th 2009 09:33

Terrorist bombings, FBI agents - not a story you would expect to come from the pen of Steve Martin. But ever since I saw his play Picasso at the Lapin Agile and read Shopgirl, it is clear that he is a man who refuses to be pigeonholed.

Traitor opens in Sudan 1978 and then cuts to Yemen in present day, where we are introduced to Samir Horn (Don Cheadle) and subsequently taken on a journey across the globe to locations including England, Spain, Canada and France. Supported by an excellent cast including Guy Pearce, Said Taghmaoui and Jeff Daniels, the script by writer/director Jeffrey Nachmanoff is in competent hands.
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Review - Away We Go

December 3rd 2009 21:28

Verona De Tessant (Maya Rudolph) and Burt Farlander (John Krasinski) are two thirty-somethings adjusting to an unexpected pregnancy. In terms of their lifestyle, they have not quite matured from the casual lifestyle of their student days. Now with the impending birth of their baby in a couple of months they realise that it is now time to make the leap from just surviving in a house to truly making a home for themselves and their family. Knowing that raising a child is a big responsibility they venture out on a road trip in search of a perfect place to raise their child.

Not wanting to be isolated from their family or friends, they logically seek out locations in order that they can be near to them so their family will have an opportunity to bond with someone that they already know

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Review - My Sister's Keeper

November 15th 2009 14:47

There is no doubt that this is a sentimental piece directed by Nick Cassavetes, director of the similarly sentimental movie The Notebook. But somehow you cannot fail to be charmed by the actors particularly the performances of leukemia-stricken Kate, played by Sofia Vassilieva and Anna, the engineered daughter to provide parts for Kate, played by Abigail Breslin.

Based on the bestselling novel by Jodi Picoult, many readers of the book may be disappointed by the change in the ending, although I will refrain from giving away any spoilers. The movie is based around the Fitzgerald family. Cameron Diaz is Sara, who has given up a successful career as a lawyer to care for her sick daughter. Her husband, Brian (Jason Patric), a LA based firefighter has been unintentionally relegated to second place and seems to somehow play a lesser role in the family

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Review - And When Did You Last See Your Father?

November 9th 2009 03:24

And When Did You Last See Your Father? is a well constructed emotional film highlighting the relationship between a father and son. Based on poet and author Blake Morrison's real life relationship with his dad, it represents the complexities, I am sure, of many relationships between that of father and son worldwide.

Forever striving for your father's affection and somehow failing to consistently reach it. Trying to prove yourself to a young girl only to have your father embarrass you out of the room. Matthew Beard as teenage Blake experiences this and more. However the relationship with his father Arthur (Jim Broadbent) becomes even more complicated when Blake suspects his father is having an affair with Aunt Beaty (Sarah Lancashire). He desperately wants to understand more about his father but his questions remain unanswered driving Blake and Arthur further apart as they grow older

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Review - Mary and Max

November 7th 2009 16:12

This little gem of a clay-mation movie missed me when it did it's original rounds and I am glad that I finally got to view the film. Written, directed and created by Australian born Adam Elliot, he has painstakingly created a wonderful story about a young girl growing up in Australia who befriends a 44 year old New Yorker via the postal system.

Max and Mary captures a unique friendship between two unlikely characters - namely Mary Daisy Dinkle and Max Jerry Horovitz. Mary is voiced by Bethany Whitmore and Toni Collette during her childhood and grown up stages respectively and Max Jerry Horovitz is wonderfully captured by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Firstly I loved the fact that a film captured the excitement of writing and waiting for a letter. I think it is such a shame that children will do most of their communication by email as it manages to take away all the charm and essence of our personalities. I recall fondly writing to penpals abroad and waiting to see what goodies and sweets they would send me from their home countries. And as both Max and Mary have a sweet tooth they take the same enjoyment in writing and sending chocolates to one another.

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Posted By: Michelle Sweeney - Category: Drama

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