Now You See Me (2013)

I don’t like magic. That is, I don’t like magicians in my face picking on me and making me look stupid. I get embarrassed and I don’t like feeling embarrassed. This being a film, I considered myself safe.

Now You See Me is about four magicians who come together as The Four Horsemen – a spectacular Vegas show incorporating various aspects of magic whose grand finale involves the robbing of a bank in Paris. This stunt of course lands them in trouble with the FBI and Interpol, who don’t take kindly to the theft of many millions of Euros and spend the entire film trying to work out how on earth they did it when they were clearly in Vegas the entire time!

While it started well, and there are some quite clever bits, the use of ‘magic’ very quickly gives way to the use of CGI and lighting effects, which as common as they are in modern entertainment made it much less impressive. I would also say that that’s cheating to use CGI for magic tricks but perhaps that’s what modern illusions are – I wouldn’t claim to be an expert. It seems a bit easy compared to the subtleties of slight of hand or misdirection though.

Now You See Me is an entertaining and fun film. Most importantly, it’s harmless. There’s nothing really special about it but it entertained me on an otherwise boring mid-week evening. Jessie Eisenburg (The Social Network) wasn’t too annoying, although he played his usual awkward geeky character. Michael Caine was quite cool. Morgan Freeman was very cool. Mélanie Laurent played her usual sweet ‘not as stupid as I look’ French blonde girl and I think it’s a shame that that’s all she really is in this. Inglorious Bastards and Beginners – both fantastic films – gave her more to play with and a real character to get into. Everyone else was a bit negligible, which is a shame for Mark Ruffalo (Avengers Assemble, Shutter Island) who is supposed to be one of the main characters. It’s a shame for Isla Fisher also whose role seemed to boil down to ‘hot girl in a fish tank’. Maybe the success of Gatsby will let her choose some more interesting parts in the future.

My only one big problem with this film is my usual big problem. This film is about slick stunts, cool bank robberies, and the odd car chase. It doesn’t need any more than that. So why the half-arsed attempt at a love story? It’s not done properly and it’s completely unnecessary. Grrr!

Killer Joe (2012)

Not many people seem to appreciate Killer Joe. 3 stars on LoveFilm, 6.8 on IMDB, and 62 on Metacritic aren’t terrible scores by any means. It’s quite standard for a good film which seems (as this has) to have gone by largely unnoticed by the world in general. There are however, an awful lot of reviews out there which proclaim it to be a horrible, unnecessary waste of space. That’s great as far as I’m concerned. Let a few soft people who like fluffy pretty films get stressed about it – that’s fine. It shows it’s doing its job properly.

Maybe it’s Matthew McConaughey’s presence – people see his name and think of happy smiley feel-good films like How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days or The Wedding Planner. Maybe they haven’t noticed that he seems to have changed direction more recently. Participating in both Tropic Thunder and Magic Mike does seem show some range. Not that you’ll catch me saying good things about the man. I still think he’s vile.

Unlike some of the other actors. Juno Temple is lovely. I was first made aware of her existence in atonement and since then I’ve seen her in The Other Boleyn Girl, Glorious 39 and, more recently, The Dark Knight Rises. I wasn’t that fussed about her at first but Killer Joe has upgraded her to I’ll-watch-something-just-because-she’s-in-it status. Emile Hirsch is also always worth watching. I don’t necessarily think he’s anything special but The Girl Next Door was funny so he’s in my good books. I don’t like Thomas Haden Church.

Killer Joe is a policeman in a small town in Texas. He’s also a killer, funnily enough. Joe is hired by Chris, a young man who’s got himself into a spot of bother with some drug dealers – he owes them money and doesn’t seem to have any. Oh dear. The obvious solution therefore is for him to get his mother killed off so that he can capitalise on her life insurance policy. His dad (now divorced from his mother) seems to agree too – it’s a plan!

The difficulty comes with paying for Joe – he wants money in advance or, when that’s not possible, a retainer. The stakes get higher and everything, of course, goes wrong. Pretty standard in terms of plot, but not done badly.

I’ve said before about liking films that make you feel something. Killer Joe certainly does that – and it’s a feeling that lingers. It’s an uncomfortable kind of feeling. Not fully shock, not horror, maybe a decent amount of disgust, but it’s mostly just uncomfortable. I loved it. As a film it is by no means perfect but I think it’s great!

And I shall echo the sentiments of others who have written about Killer Joe – don’t watch it if you’re eating KFC.

Like Minds (2006)

As with many films on my watch list, I first heard about Like Minds by seeing a trailer on a DVD. It caught my attention by the presence of Toni Collette whom I at least think I like, even if I usually find that I actually don’t (she is, incidentally, the weakest part of this film), and because it seems to mostly be about two boys who are, frankly, evil. And I love watching cold, deliberate evil. It’s a similar style to We Need to Talk About Kevin – that completely self-aware, could-not-give-a-shit attitude that’s very impressive and powerful. It’s the reason why I like bad guys: Chuck Bass, Heath Ledger’s Joker, Gollum (no, wait – scratch that).

This film’s examples of evil incarnate are Alex Forbes (played by Eddie Redmayne – My Week with Marilyn, Les Misérables), and Nigel Colbie (Tom Sturridge – The Boat That Rocked, On the Road). Both actors are fantastic and play calm and twisted very well.

Like Minds follows a criminal psychologist Sally (Collette) as she attempts to uncover the truth about the murder of schoolboy Nigel. Alex, arrested for the murder, swears he didn’t do it despite compelling evidence to the contrary. As Sally talks to him and probes deeper into his thoughts and memories, we gradually discover more about the boys’ relationship over the past few moths, and how dark and sinister the whole affair actually is.

As I said above, for me Collette is the weakest part of this film. She’s mostly fine but it’s ruined by one moment with a particularly exaggerated gesture that immediately made me think of About a Boy where she does exactly the same thing. There’s also a bizarre moment where Sally breaks into Nigel’s house without any kind of warrant or apparently telling anyone where she’s going. Not Collette’s fault – that’s more to do with the writers but it bothered me and I don’t see why she couldn’t do everything properly. I know films like to make the main character go all maverick and everything but she’s not really the main character – just a vessel through which the real story is told (sorry Toni). All in all I much preferred the flashback parts of the film to the present day parts.

Despite sounding rather negative, I found the whole film very compelling. It’s a mystery and a thriller and incorporates obscure Christian history and inherited mantels. A bit like The Da Vinci Code but better (despite being less thoroughly researched).

It’s also given me more of a reason to see Les Misérables, as if Hugh Jackman wasn’t enough. I’ll see if when the time comes whether or not the presence of Hugh Jackman, Eddie Redmayne and Helena Bonham Carter together are enough to outweigh having to sit through Amanda Seyfried and Anne Hathaway attempting to sing.

The Town (2010)

I normally think you can tell a lot about a film by what trailers are included on the DVD. Presumably some thought goes into it and the powers that be pick the trailers most suited to the feature film. Many films on my ‘to watch’ list have first come to my attention as trailers on DVD and I enjoy getting excited about new films almost as much as I do watching the film itself (OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration). It does however lead to the difficult situation where for every film you watch, you find two or three more that you want to watch. You’re never going to win that game. Unless of course you’ve seen all the films in the trailers already, then you get to experience a smug sense of useless satisfaction.

In front of The Town were trailers for Due Date, and Life as We Know it. Oh dear. This being one of the more mainstream films on my rental list, and one co-written and directed by Ben Affleck, I was prepared for something a little more blockbustery but Life as We Know it? Really? I saw bits of that when I worked at the Cinema and it has nothing in common with gun-wielding bank-robbers. It’s also a pile of shit. Maybe once you include certain actors like Ben Affleck, Jude Law, or Matt Damon films cease to have a proper genre and simply get put in a category of loud, bright, ego-massaging, Hollywood money-making schemes, so you can include any old rubbish you want. Or maybe the trailer-picker was hungover. Or maybe I should shut up.

Moving on.

The Town is set in Charlestown, Boston, and shows us the lives of people for whom crime is simply a way of life. Doug MacRay (Affleck) and his friends Jem, Gloansy and Dez, are professional bank robbers and the film opens with them doing what they do best and robbing a bank. They do it in style too, with some rather menacing Skeletor masks. For some reason they take the manager, Claire, hostage but later decide to release her without harm. This whole hostage thing is new for them and, unsure what to do, Jem suggests killing her to stop her talking to the FBI. Doug doesn’t think this is such a good idea though and follows Claire around for a bit to make sure she’s OK.

The problem is, he starts talking to her in the laundromat one day, and a romance begins to develop. Well that was never going to go well was it?

Not content with one bank, we see a couple more robberies from the group, with the police and FBI hot on their trail. The ‘jobs’ continue to be stylishly executed (mostly), with scary nun costumes and the smoothness of Ocean’s Eleven. Surely it can only be a matter of time before their luck runs out?

The problem Affleck has with The Town, and the problem he had with Argo, is that if you arm yourself with a great script, and a great cast, you will inevitably end up being the weakest part of your own film. That’s not something anybody wants to have to deal with. Luckily for Affleck, he also hired Blake Lively (Gossip Girl, Green Lantern). She plays Krista, the drugged up sister of Jem and sometime girlfriend of Doug (and possibly the mother of his child). I dislike Lively generally and find her really quite annoying so, by comparison, I found less to object to in Affleck’s acting. Until later on that is when she appears less. Oh well – you can’t have everything.

On the whole I was really quite pleasantly surprised with The Town, as I was with Argo. It’s a good film, and I cared about Doug and was routing for him throughout. I certainly enjoyed it and I would very possibly watch it again.

It’s just a shame about the ending.

The Killer Inside Me (2010)

I won’t lie, the first time I watched The Killer Inside Me I was really disappointed. I’d first read about its existence in a magazine about nine months before it was released and got really excited. And I mean really excited! A film from the point of view of a sadistic, misogynistic murderer – totally my thing!

Eagerly anticipating something for an extended period of time is usually a guarantee that you’ll be disappointed because it’s never going to be what you imagine. This wasn’t helped by the fact that I found it really hard to understand what was going on. It might have been the shoddy sound system in the cinema I was in or Casey Affleck’s strong Southern accent but I kept missing details. Key ones too – which aren’t repeated.

So I missed a lot of the plot and that was a bit annoying, but I did manage to get something completely different and unexpected out of the film – Jessica Alba being beaten about with a leather belt. Turns out, that’s awesome! There are a lot of short sex scenes in this film and most of them involve some manner of violence. That’s really quite cool to watch and The Killer Inside Me has lead to a drastic change in my chosen film genres since. Multiple repeat viewings of this film have ironed out any confusion over plot and fully cemented this as my favourite English-language film ever! Which is really quite a big deal.

Words cannot express how much I now love this film. If I’m in a film conversation with someone new I will 100% mention it at some point. And then re-mention it several times at later dates. Everyone I know is undoubtedly bored of hearing me bang on about how much I love this film and I want everyone everywhere to at least have some sort of opinion on it. Even if they don’t like it. But how could you not like it? There’s wilful evil, sex, violence and Jessica Alba’s bottom. What more could you possibly want?

The book’s really good too.

Being in first person we not only get to see all the evil doings of Lou Ford – a respected sheriff in a small town in Texas – but we get to hear his reasoning. His logic and that he just knew he has to kill this person, or that one. Ford’s a clever guy who listens to classical music and does maths for fun – he’s not some random idiot with a gun. That makes everything a lot more beautiful to watch. He’s calm, meticulous. Obviously more a little fucked up in the head but there we go. The overall effect is that of quite a soothing film, albeit with some shocking moments at odd intervals. Everything just happens without any kind of horrible stressy build-up and I really really enjoyed it. Watching it again recently has just reminded me of how awesome it is.

Director Michael Winterbottom’s other TV and film offerings include 24 Hour Party People, A Cock and Bull Story, The Trip, and (most importantly as far as I’m concerned) Trishna – a fantastic film based on Tess of the D’Urbervilles and set in India. You should see that too. Apart from The Trip (can’t stand Steve Coogan or Rob Brydon) I’m going to put a decent amount of effort into watching as many of his films as possible and I’ll keep a sharp look out for The Look of Love which is due to be released next year. It contains so many famous British actors and comedians it’s unrealistic for me to try to name them all (I’ll begin with Stephen Fry, Anna Freil, Dara O’Briain, Matt Lucas…) and tells the story of ‘porn baron’ Paul Reymond – sounds a little bit cool.

Watch this film! All of you! I want to be able to talk about it with you at some point.

Polisse (2011)

I enjoyed this film. I think. It’s candid (sometimes very candid), and follows a child protection unit (CPU) in the Paris police force. These are the people who track down runaway crack-whores and their babies, break up gypsy-run child exploitation gangs, and prosecute paedophiles. It sounds a fun job.

The film follows the group rather than individuals, although personal storylines of some of the characters are explored, and we see them together either at work or unwinding afterwards with food and wine – it’s all very French. They argue, they shout, they’re a group of passionate people. They’ve been thrown together in a difficult career and appear to have bonded through the difficulty.

Into this mix is thrown Melissa (played by writor/director Maïwenn), a photographer who wants to follow the unit, capturing key events and scenes on film.

It’s a film with a completely different style to what I usually experience when I venture into French film. Think of Amilé, Potiche, Delicatessen - all of them very different films but with that little bit of French quirkiness and oddness about them; the type of oddness that I can only usually deal with in small doses. Polisse has none of that and has encouraged me to try French cinema more often for it really is quite a good film.

Visually it isn’t particularly disturbing. They’re obviously not going to show most of the crimes that they’re dealing with on film. There are many police interviews however, which frequently go into detail of the offences the suspects are accused of – both with the suspects themselves, and with witnesses/children. This makes for some uncomfortable viewing. It would be hard to watch police interviews with remorseless paedophiles without some strong emotions rising up - the obvious surprise and shock, with a twinge of disgust and a base-note of anger. I personally enjoyed that though. They’re not feelings that get expressed all that often in day-to-day life and I think it’s good practice to bring them out every now and then.  Happy smiley films are all very well but I really value those films that properly affect you and the way you feel. Is that not what they’re for after all?

And if that does nothing for you, wait for the end. Set a little later after a summer break, it feels a little bit like it’s just been tagged on for completeness. It’s not quite long enough to assert itself as a decent section of the film and me with a new feeling – surprise, yes, but mostly confusion.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Now, I don’t think I’d be doing myself a disservice if I were to admit that this film thoroughly confused me. I like to consider myself reasonably competent at following a plot, but I found myself feeling exceptionally stupid as I stumbled through this film, more than once having to pause the DVD with a “hang on, what!?”. Maybe it would have been easier to follow in a cinema where nearly all of your concentration is on the film. You just can’t achieve those same conditions at home; especially after a day at work, especially with a glass of wine in hand. In the end it became a joint effort, with the additional occasional use of Wikipedia for clarification.

Being able to follow a storyline as it is told to you will not get you very far with this film. You are not told the story. What you are told are a few key facts, supplemented by visual clues. Plot is revealed by the putting on of a shoe, or a drink of vodka. You are left to fill in the gaps. And woe betide you if you don’t learn the names of the characters immediately.

Feeling really rather baffled throughout did not though, spoil the film for me. The cinematography is wonderful and the acting fully deserving of the umpteen award nominations. There are also several images that will stay with me for a while, for better or worse (Benedict Cumberbatch I’m looking at you).

It could do with being a bit longer. At less than two hours there’s room for better explanation of some of the twists and turns and expansion of a few of the scenes. A few fewer meaningful looks and a little more conversation between characters to give us an extra half hour and a little more comprehension.

I look forward to watching it again armed with a firmer grasp of the key characters and concepts. I might then be able to appreciate it fully for it certainly is a fantastic film.

4 Stars