12 Years A Slave (2014)

12 Years A Slave is a remarkably emotive epic/biopic (bi-epic) about Solomon Northupp, highly tipped for Academy Awards in March and, less frivolously, an important testament to a period of recent history that is rarely the subject of cinema. Solomon – a real person who wrote about this series of unfortunate events in a book, and here played by Englishman Chiwetel Ejiofor – is a free black man in a world of 19^th century American slavery. Whilst temporarily away from his New York family Solomon gets captured and winds up being sold – falsely – as a slave by Paul Giamatti to, first, Benedict Cumberbatch and then Michael Fassbender.

Director Steve McQueen is one of the most talented filmmaking men around (his two previous pictures were Shame and Hunger) whose artistic preferences bring various subjects to vitality, conjuring art from the artifices of others. Alongside his regular cinematographer partner Sean Bobbitt they usually make highly visual films that are Impressionistically brushed. McQueen and Bobbitt tone down the photographic flair for 12 Years and paint a more pragmatic rendering, an uptight more realistic dalliance with conventionality though this remains an art film of high integrity and dignity.

Crossing the hapless extent of humid Southern, slavery characters we – the audience – retch at the sweaty perversion of Edwin Epps (Fassbender), the meek collusion of William Ford (Cumberbatch), and the pipsqueaky Tibeats (convincingly enunciated by Paul Dano), until we are absolved by the long-coiffured Canadian saviour Brad Pitt. McQueen’s eclectic assortment of characters lyrically cover any and every angle of personality that survived in the early 19^th century American slavery culture. And we are subjected utterly to the story of Solomon; we are entirely invested in his redemption, and then saturated emotionally when he is rescued from the plough fields of despair. Yet there is a lingering gnat of doubt that we are self-conscious of: Solomon was only one among millions saved; imagine the plight of those other poor souls inexplicably left to rot in those barbaric trades. McQueen leaves this despairing seed intentionally.

It’s an A-star cast list mixed with newer and very talented blood, like Lupita Nyong’o. And they all bring a heft to their respective roles, all ensuring their parts are sufficiently embedded within the tapestry McQueen constructs. There are no scene-stealing characters because the very concept of such a character is an individualised, decadent affectation that can subvert the movie. All are subject to the higher cinematic context, which is the plight of Solomon.

Of the slaves themselves we perceive the difference between those who are free and have received an education – like Solomon – and the slavish companions Solomon’s presence is graced with; those born and raised in the psychologically hindering confines of institutional enslavement. Unlike his closed companions Solomon has knowledge of the outside liberated world, but this is no comfort to his psyche; it intensifies his misfortune and heightens the appalling extent of his fall. His fellow slaves live their simple, cowed existence in the profound shadow of inherent inferiority. We are reminded of Frantz Fanon’s writing and of the Sartre play ‘The Respectful Prostitute’, in which the accused ‘nigger’ refuses to shoot his white accusers on the basis that “they’re white folks” and cannot even comprehend to subvert or destroy the superiority that was so feverishly instilled in his race. White men are the undisputed masters of this America. But McQueen doesn’t make these literary allusions explicit: he has no intention of placing 12 Years within an intellectual discourse that might isolate his audience from the central idea. His raw, challenging work is intended to be approached by all, because the past suffering of man ought to be universally applicable to all and understood by all.

If 12 Years is a piece that kind of transcends the frivolous binary of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (no film should be judged like that really – there are good and bad things in every film, etc… yes even The Room) it should still be the subject of film criticism but there’s nothing I can really think of to say, critically. McQueen’s rambunctious spirit is pervasive, as will be flippantly attestable come the Baftas and Oscars.

Top Eight Movies of 2013

So here we are (admittedly a bit later than other end of year lists) with the top eight films of 2013. 

At number eight is Blue Jasmine. More than once have critics gleefully announced the demise of Woody Allen, the man Roger Ebert once labelled ‘the treasure of cinema’. Sure Allen’s filmmaking method of make-as-many-films-as-possible-and-hope-something-sticks has given us some wayward products but they have always been more than counter-balanced by the greats like Annie Hall or Husbands And Wives. Blue Jasmine is a terrifically written story – which Allen pens himself of course – that manages to adroitly capture a very challenging paradox: of combining a deft humour with the frighteningly serious mental disintegration of a woman in her forties. It’s sublimely poised on a delicate equilibrium for the entire 98 minute running time. Not only does he negotiate that confluence of tone but Allen also juxtaposes the travails of Jasmine (Cate Blanchett), her flashbacks with crooked husband Hal (Alec Baldwin) and the love-life of step sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins). He manages to incorporate all these disparate tendrils of story into one captivating, coherent plotline. Blue Jasmine is a lesson in how to write a near perfect screenplay.

Next: Frances Ha, Noah Baumbach’s monochrome film. Frances from Frances Ha is full of joire-de-vivre, definably Iggy’s lust for life. Greta Gerwig is jubilantly hilarious as Frances. She radiates the requisite optimism for Baumbach’s character and adeptly enacts the wince-inducing scrapes that Frances gets herself into. Gerwig – who also writes – is the lifeblood of Frances Ha. But Baumbach and his cinematographer Sam Levy certainly encapsulate the bohemian cool of New York City. There’s a hint of fond satire for that hipster kind of culture, something so intrinsically linked to New York. Frances Ha is a charming watch, a bit twee but not in the emotionally shallow way – twee in the coy sexy way.

Django Unchained proves that if he so desires, Quentin Tarantino could make a fantastic suspense thriller. And for two hours that is what we have here – a superbly scripted, masterfully poised edge, then Tarantino’s self-control relents, the craziness kicks in and Django becomes the mish-mash of earnest drama and B-movie gore that its director loves. Jamie Foxx is the eponymous Django, a freed slave out to wreak his revenge over the world of white men, delicately seeking to liberate his wife from the lawful clutches of Leonardo Di Caprio’s plantation owner. Foxx is accompanied by Christoph Waltz and submits another beguiling performance as a Tarantino German. But perhaps the greatest legacy that Django bequeaths to the world is proving the acceptance, nay the necessity, of the production of films that centre on American slavery… even if the last fifteen minutes was just gratuitously mental.

The Place Beyond the Pines was released into the world way back in spring of this year, a kind of dramatic epic that sprawls across its 140 minute runtime incorporating three distinct acts and time periods. The first sees Ryan Gosling in his usual reticent role choosing to look stay in Schenectady to watch over his son Jason, who lives with mother Eva Mendes. But he approaches the issue of financial support in a demonstrably non-lawful manner and is shot by the policeman Bradley Cooper, who is subsequently wracked with guilt. Cooper has a son called AJ, the same age as Jason. The third act concerns their volatile, dysfunctional friendship which is ignorant of the morbid connection between their respective father's. Whilst it may be a little long for those with shorter attention spans Pines is a visually appealing movie with a veracity and vigour to follow through on the style.

Only God Forgives is a neon bleached blitz set in Bangkok, sometimes highly stylised sometimes gritty and difficult – but always with that Nico Winding Refn aesthetic in mind. Lieutenant Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm) is the curious figure who acts as a self-appointed moral executor in a city bereft of law or justice, Refn’s anarchic angel with a sword. It features another reticent Ryan Gosling performance, akin to his appearance in the popular Drive. Photographically this really isn’t that different from Drive: both take place in dark urban environments, lit only by the vice and torment of its inhabitants; but this is far grislier fare with obscurer motives yet it remains wholly compelling and utterly arresting.

3. A Field in England harnessed plenty of the right kind of social media attention with its unorthodox release: the movie came out simultaneously in the cinema, VOD (video on demand – iTunes etc), DVD and on television via the English film channel Film4 (who also funded the production). And yet a strategy such as this needs a memorable film to follow through on those concepts; Ben Wheatley delivers on that count: A Field in England is a richly disturbing exercise in cinematic psychedelia, darkly surreal and incisively acted. It manages to strike at the contemporary yet remunerate the English Civil War mental-ness it recreates. Shot in black and white with a penchant for the bizarre, A Field is a difficult watch. Particularly the 10 minute psych-out bit towards the end. It’s a kaleidoscopic montage of mirrored camera effects and slow motion, soundtracked by jarringly atonal noise. The impact is withering and fascinating, and remarkably efficient in conveying the bewilderment that it does. But this picture is all the more interesting for these affectations.

2. From the opening ten minute opening salvo, almost entirely one beautiful swirling shot, every filmmaking aspect of Gravity is strangely realist and genuine and fibrous yet blessed with the photographic cerebral grace that cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki somehow bestows upon Alfonso Cuaron's film. How the sets and photographic angles were constructed completely confounds my admittedly limited knowledge of CGI and camerawork, but I just can't imagine how they were conducted... just staggering. Cuaron’s work is confounding and brilliant and will be remembered for a long time.

And number one. Number one is the Italian... thing… Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza. It’s the most beautiful film I have ever seen. Cinematography, music, the concept – Toni Servillo reflecting on his bohemian life in the beautiful Roma – everything is a bit stunning and kind of unexplainable.

That’s it. Another good year for the art of filmmaking.

Ensemble of Reviews 2

 Captain Phillips (2013)

Tom Hanks is brilliant as the titular character of a Maersk container ship that gets attacked by Somali pirates around the Horn of Africa, but Paul Greengrass’ latest thriller lacks the raw political punch that it could and perhaps should have had. Captain Phillips makes vague attempts to contextualise the plight of Muse (Barkhad Ali) early on, and they do occupy a kind of villainous ambiguity, but the reasoning behind the Somali piracy is never forcefully alluded to or revealed. Perhaps this was deliberately side-stepped by the producers or the money men – after all, it is the financial greed and corporational trading gluttony that facilitated the production of this film.

Thriller movies set on boats and ships have a rich cinematic heritage – Speed 2, Under Siege, The Poseidon Adventure – although this is considerably more serious and considerably less trashy. In truth Captain Phillips loses its lustre as soon as Hanks leaves his ship and gets smuggled away in a lifeboat and taken prisoner by his Somali friends, but then regains it when he has to simulate the visual effects of shock, which Hanks does in absolutely captivating fashioning. Greengrass’ picture is entertaining in its own morosely disaster film-y way, but lacks the ju-ju to really leave an indelible impression on the gods of cinema history (id est me).

Blue Is The Warmest Colour (2013)

There were serious, debilitating criticisms about the male fantasy lesbian sex scenes featured in Blue is the Warmest Colour last summer when Abdellatif Kechiche’s film clinched the Palme d’Or at Cannes. And they are kind of unnecessary. I’m not being nanny state – these are ten minute scenes, stretched out and exposed to the extent that they lose all cinematic potency, or even interest. Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux had to bare all for their roles and they weren’t particularly pleased about it, calling the shooting experience ‘horrible’ and Kechiche’s directorial style overly demanding, even exploitative. Furthermore the author of the original graphic novel, Julie Maroh, labelled the three hour epic as simply ‘porn’. Nonetheless it cannot be denied that these stories furnished the film with a whole extra layer of PR though.

The film itself seems less a study of homosexuality in modern France – the reactions of Adèle’s friends are only briefly shown – and more a love story about Adèle and Emma, and their evolving and dissolving relationship. In that sense Kechiche’s vision is a pure presentation of love, that love is universal and present regardless of sexual orientation; he looks to liberate his audience’s preconceptions from titillating prejudice. Narrative arcs that unfurl over a number of years – like Blue is the Warmest Colour – often find it difficult to maintain relevance and, in truth, the third act does meander as we leave teenage self-discovery and enter the adult dialectic. Regardless, the quality of acting is superb, and brings the house down in some of the central scenes that drip with emotion and altruistic longing.

Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

Matthew McConaughey’s Golden Globe winning performance makes this Jean-Marc Vallée film about the spread of HIV in the late 1980s. Loosely based on true events (isn’t every film nowadays) McConaughey plays the Texan hick Ron Woodroof who puts aside his antiquated homophobic opinions to sell beneficial drugs that the FDA (the US Food and Drug Association) deemed illegal in the States to aid fellow sufferers of the AIDs virus. Jared Leto is his effeminate accomplice and Jennifer Garner – who is, like McConaughey, in the process of reinvigorating a critically flagging acting career – the sympathetic local doctor. Their enemies are the FDA and anonymous pharmaceutical companies who harvest people’s lives to make as much money as possible. It’s the emotional journey of Woodroof who deservedly steals the limelight: he goes from electrician/cad/bull rider to a morally fibrous clandestine businessman who travels to Mexico, Japan, Israel and other places to secure the drugs his clients need. And McConaughey is that man who takes on the gruff nature of Woodroof’s character, even replicating the latter’s frail physiognomy with a severe weight loss program. Dallas Buyers Club is a heart-warming biopic of strength against adversity – over both the FDA and the fatal disease which eventually claims his life – and thoroughly rewarding watch.

Drinking Buddies (2013)

Drinking Buddies is Joe Swanberg’s new dramatic comedy, starring Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson as two colleagues who work at a brewery and events company, and their sturdily platonic friendship and how its dynamic works amidst Kate’s (Wilde) break-up with her boyfriend. It’s a film that tries to be warm and natural in its quick-fire conversational dialogue – a refining of Swanberg’s history in the inane mumblecore sub-genre – yet the characters are perversely unengaging, leaving us (yes, the royal we) cold and isolated from their respective issues. There are moments that intrigue but the heart-felt bits sag with emotive strain; Drinking Buddies is at its best when focussing on the awkward looks and body language hints that Wilde and Johnson are careful to convey. This should be a light-hearted flick and nothing more.

An Ensemble of Reviews 1

How I Live Now (2013)

Protagonist Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) is a strong-willed American with a cryptic family background and grumpy anti-authoritarian ways, who swiftly entertains a strong attraction to her floppy-haired cousin in the latter’s English countryside home. This is Kevin MacDonald’s (Last King of Scotland, State of Play) post-apocalyptic microhistory film adaptation of Meg Rosoff’s novel of the same name. London is destroyed by an off camera nuclear bomb (the aftereffects of which are viscerally interpreted by MacDonald) and the little family – two brothers, their sister, and cousin Daisy – are left alone to fend for themselves in a homage to pastoral living, a throwback to the bountiful and unequivocal innocence and beauty of children playing, minus the weighty presence of adults and their political terrorism. But the children are indicted and fragmented into the mass evacuation of south England by the military scourge. The adults tear apart the fantasy lifestyle. We follow Daisy and the little girl Piper up to a dullard family home, then their runaway journey back down to the south in a desperate bid to reunite with the lost boys. Infused throughout is the palpable idyll of the verdant country, the English forests, landscapes and streams; these images are prioritised over the grey lethargy of urban locations.

The source of danger is ever-present yet acutely abstract – the complete removal of an identifiable ‘enemy’ hinders this picture. This would be fine if MacDonald hadn’t deemed to show a scene in which the completely anonymous, seemingly apolitical ‘enemy’ can be seen shooting at children. Who are they? What are their political motivations? By introducing an alien aspect that needn’t otherwise have been there, credibility is stretched and undermined. Beyond that there is a faint absurdity surrounding the determination of Daisy, whose whirlwind romance of a few days with Eddie is enough to propel her halfway down England and treat Piper uncompassionately. It is faintly ridiculous. How I Live Now isn’t unnecessarily a bad film it just shoves pastoralism straight down your throat, like a less subtle Keats.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

Aah The Hobbit 2, another sequel with an unhealthily bombastic budget and a colon in the title. P. Diddy Jackson slaps down another grandiloquent slice of Middle Earth apple pie, flatulently imbuing his cinema with saccharine set pieces and 48 frames a second, three dimensional animated VFX. Yet there is a method to the action-packed madness, a recognition and deference to the story that ultimately, and perhaps more than anything else, contributes to the fun. For a three hour film The Desolation of Smaug is considerably more faceted than the first hobbit film, with a variety of sets and challenges that the protagonists collectively encounter, with personal quests that enhance the narrative rather than distract from. Even the bits that writers Jackson, Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh and Guillermo del Toro wrote independent of Tolkien’s books – like the presence of Legolas (Orlando Bloom, obviously), his back story and his elven friend Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) – add to the cinematic experience rather detract, resulting in a movie that is broadly representative of a pre-Sauron Middle Earth. Martin Freeman reunites with Sherlock Holmes as Smaug, part of a laudable cast that incorporates the revolting Macchiavellianism of Stephen Fry’s Master of Dale and the stubborn poise of Lee Pace as Thranduil, among the regular crew. Fantasy respect can be re-appropriated to the New Zealander filmmakers; the decision to turn The Hobbit book into a three way film trilogy doesn't seem quite so nonsensical.

American Hustle (2013)

This represents perhaps the pinnacle of David O. Russell’s career rejuvenation after The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, sweeping the infamous actor bust-ups of years past into the ‘forgotten’ category. And this is very brilliant in its own peculiar way. American Hustle relies entirely on its idiosyncratic characters which have been constructed by writers Russell and Eric Warren Singer from the perms, flares and facial hair of the 1970s; Christian Bale is the conman Irving who has been, with partner and lover Sydney (Amy Adams), coerced into exposing and entrapping corrupt politicians by FBI ladder-climber Richie DiMaso, whose slimy predilections and desperation are expertly portrayed by vogue actor Bradley Cooper; all the while Irving’s erratic housewife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) is inadvertently sabotaging her husband’s carefully laid plans. The plot is secondary to those characters, something about taking down naïve mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), as they all dally round, contriving events and deceiving each other with humorous asides and period costumes. Hustle is so Seventies and American it’s affected and unspontaneous, something that grates a little towards the end, particularly when Lawrence does the housework whilst singing to Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’. Perhaps that’s just me – because I fucking hate 1970s fashion and pop music, a debacle in the long decades and centuries of human civilisation, up there with the post-Roman Dark Ages and Forties Germany. This is eminently enjoyable, though too self-congratulatory by half.

The Selfish Giant (2013)

A depressing drama film about poverty in a Yorkshire town; written and directed by the multi-talented Clio Barnard. Two friends - one Arbor a shrimp-like street urchin with a serious attention deficiency and the other Swifty, a gentle giant from a large family with an equine spirit - get thrown out of school and try to make their own money seeking independence, to succeed in the areas which their parents and older brothers had failed. By dint of their perseverance they salvage and steal scrap metal for Kitten, the local scrapyard dealer. Swifty ingratiates himself with the latter by revealing an expertise with the horse-chariot racing that Kitten regularly gambles on; but Arbor is left behind, jealous and inadvertently pissing off almost everyone he ever meets with his blunt demeanour and naive authority. Arbor's vain attempts grow increasingly desperate putting more strain on his friendship with Swifty, until the starkly tragic ending which leaves a striking shadow. This is a grey, tawdry film brilliantly acted by the young protagonists and exquisitely directed by one who possesses the filmmaking nous, knowing when to stultify and when to penetrate, and how to sequence scenes - regularly juxtaposing between sensitive and harsh. It's one of the films of 2013, and yet remains so humble and small in its miniature intentions - to portray one tiny corner of the world, and of two boys lost in the bureaucratic cracks of modern society.