Tag: Joel Edgerton

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Red Sparrow

Since around August 1991, there’s been something missing from American films: A good stock villain. That’s when the Russian Communist Party ceased to exist, the Soviet Union dissolved, and the Cold War, a nebulous conflict without a clear start date, officially came to an end. Millions around the globe who had lived their entire lives under the specter of nuclear annihilation breathed a sigh of relief. Freedom, democracy, and capitalism stood triumphant. But action and spy movies never recovered.

The Russians had been such good villains for us, the yang to our yin. The Soviets of movie lore were just as capable and well funded as their Western counterparts, but their fanatical adherence to an ideology we only half understood made them much more ruthless. Where would James Bond be without From Russia With Love? Rotting away in some flea-bitten colonial capital, keeping the locals subdued for the Queen, probably. The Russian threat, even dressed up as SPECTRE, gave him purpose and meaning. In the post-Cold War period, Bond would fight international criminal cartels and terrorists, but it just wasn’t the same. Nobody had that bad guy zing like the Russkies.

Well I’ve got good news for fans of international intrigue and the possibility of death by cleansing nuclear fire! The Russians are back! And this time they’re sexier than ever! We’re talking Jennifer Lawrence sexy here, people. Lawrence, fresh from dumping Darren Aronofsky because he Would. Not. Shut. Up. about their arthouse embarrassment mother!, plays Dominika Egrova, a made-up name for a Bolshoi ballerina if ever I heard one. Dominika is nearing the peak of a promising career on Moscow’s biggest stage when a gruesome injury throws her life into ruins. Her father is dead, her mother is an invalid, and, as anyone who has recently watched I, Tonya could tell you, there’s not much of a job market for hobbled ballerinas. That’s when her uncle, Ivan Dimitrevich Egorov (Matthias Schoenaerts) makes her an offer she can’t refuse.

Let me pause here to say I love the character of Ivan, and not just because he has the laziest possible made-up name for a Russian bad guy. Everything about Schoenaerts as Ivan is designed to push your Bond movie buttons. If this were 1963, he would be working for the KGB. As it is, he works for the SVR. Even his haircut and the impeccable tailoring of his suits resemble Red Grant, Bond’s nemesis in From Russia With Love.

If Schoenaerts is Red Grant, then Charlotte Rampling is Krebs, the matronly SPECTRE agent with the switchblade shoe. Rampling is even called “Matron” by the collection of would-be super spies in the notorious school where Dominika is sent to learn her trade craft, which consists mostly of picking locks and being very sexy. “The Cold War did not end!” she exclaims, before making Dominika and a tovarisch date raper with the completely authentic name Dimitri Ustinov (Kristof Konrad) strip and get it on for the class.

Dominika doesn’t spend long at spy school, as she quickly grows too ruthless and edgy even for the Cold War relics in charge. She’s sent into the field to root out a mole by seducing CIA agent Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), whose name is totally not just made up to sound cool. Thus begins round after round of double, triple, and quadruple crosses with a salchow twist. Everybody betrays everyone else, and plots too complex to even follow if you’re taking notes (I was) pile up like leaves falling in Gorky Park.

Here’s the thing about Red Sparrow. It’s completely ridiculous, way too long, and yet also, somehow entertaining. A lot of that probably comes down to Lawrence, who pretty much just brazens her way through the proceedings with her movie star’s physical confidence. Lawrence earns her paycheck, which, given the nude scenes, must have been substantial. And really, isn’t elevating mediocre material by sheer charisma pretty much the job description of a movie star? Lawrence’s accent never stabilizes, but her lock jaw inscrutability takes inspiration from Best Actress winner Frances McDormand as her eyes whisper “Zees men are pigs. I vill control zem.”

I can’t help but think Red Sparrow works as well as it did for me because I watched it right after reading The New Yorker‘s extended exegesis of the Steele Dossier. It may make for an eye rolling film plot, but blinding powerful men with boobies and then blackmailing the hell out of them apparently works like a charm. Just look around.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Midnight Special

There was a time when the mission of science fiction was to produce a “sense of wonder” in the audience. You can see this in the works of masters like Ray Bradbury, who was able to effortlessly translate the terror of the unknown into the joy of discovery. Arthur C. Clarke was at his best when creating stories of exploration where there was very little conflict between the humans who set themselves against the vast strangeness of the universe.

This kind of sci-fi, which became much rarer after the ascendence of Philip K. Dick’s paranoid worldview, was reflected in some of the great films of the 20th century. In the hands of a master, like Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Steven Spielberg in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, film is the perfect medium for conjuring up secular religious awe. In lesser hands, the lack of overt conflict can get boring.

There’s no shortage of conflict in Midnight Special, the new film from Jeff Nichols, the Little Rock writer/director, who is the brother of Memphis rock star Ben Nichols, lead singer of Lucero. Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher) has been kidnapped by his father Roy (Michael Shannon), and they are on the run, with Lucas (Joel Edgerton) along for muscle. But it’s soon apparent that this is no ordinary domestic conflict gone bad. Alton, who wears blue swim goggles, can’t go out in the daytime, and avoids too much stimulation by obsessively reading comic books, is a willing accomplice in his kidnapping. And the people they’re running from are a dangerous cult, whom we meet when the FBI raids their church service. They look like a fundamentalist Mormon or Mennonite congregation, but their scripture is a strange techno-gibberish that lead FBI investigator Paul Sevier (Adam Driver) reveals as classified satellite communications that were apparently intercepted by Alton’s brain.

Adam Driver hunts that sci-fi “sense of wonder” in Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special.

That’s not the only weird thing Alton’s brain can do. When he gets too stimulated or emotional, blinding light shoots out of his eyes, like the kids in the immortal, 1960 British horror film Village of the Damned. And, most importantly, for the cult that sprang up around him, he can induce ecstatic visions in other people during intense, mutual trances. But each supernatural experience drains Alton a little bit more, and it’s clear from his pale, shaking frame that he can’t take much more. Roy has studied Alton’s revelations and, after reuniting him with his mother, Sarah (Kirsten Dunst), is determined to get the boy to a mysterious set of coordinates in three days, where they believe the boy’s salvation is to be had.

Lieberher is a gifted child actor who wowed in his film premiere opposite Bill Murray in St. Vincent, and his otherworldly stare is at the heart of making Midnight Special believable. Nichols, who also wrote the film, is clearly riffing on Close Encounters and E.T., and for stretches of the film, he achieves the tricky tone of sci-fi wonder, thanks mostly to his well-designed shot choices and spare but effective special effects. But Spielberg’s classics also had flashes of humor and an undercurrent of raw-edged family drama. Midnight Special has one, slack-jawed gear. Dunst, Edgerton, and the evil cultists all carry the same glazed, far-away look on their faces for most of the film. Worst of all is Shannon, who appears to be reprising his role as General Zod’s corpse in Batman v Superman. Driver is, once again, the best actor in the film, and Nichols gives him a little more room to be playful.

As demonstrated by the Syfy Channel’s recent failed attempt to adapt Clarke’s masterpiece Childhood’s End into a miniseries, the “sense-of-wonder” stories are difficult to translate for our more cynical times. Midnight Special is uneven, but just successful enough to suggest that there’s room in contemporary sci-fi for more positive, contemplative films.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Film Review: Black Mass

I’m on record as saying the gangster movie is a played-out genre, except I think I phrased it more like “If I have to watch another movie about well-dressed gangsters in the Northeast, I’m gonna puke.”

I know gangster movies have been a staple since at least 1931, when Jimmy Cagney strutted around in The Public Enemy, and I know that, at their best, they’re a commentary on the American dream, capitalism, the immigrant experience, etc. But lately, it seems like they’re a shortcut to gravitas for a bunch of writers and directors who are obsessed with a vision of masculinity that, in 2015, seems increasingly toxic. I’ve gone beyond the point where I think it’s fun to watch jowly men scowl at each other across well-appointed tables. We get it. You liked The Godfather. Let’s move on.

It would be too much to say that Black Mass dispelled me of that notion, but director Scott Cooper’s film is good enough to suggest that maybe there’s life left in the old gangster movie carcass yet. To be fair, James “Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp) and his totally legitimate business associates in the Winter Hill Gang were not, by any stretch of the imagination, well dressed.

Black Mass marks a return to serious acting for Johnny Depp.

Black Mass is told in a series of flashbacks, as members of Bulger’s gang, beginning with Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemons) are deposed by the FBI. In their memories, Bulger was just as contradictory a figure as Cagney in The Public Enemy. He was a ruthless, violent thug, but he also was kind to children, let his mother win at gin rummy, and was beloved in the South Boston neighborhood where he grew up. By the time we first meet him in 1975, he has already served nine years years in San Quentin and Alcatraz, and was a respected boss in Boston’s Irish mob.

Instead of getting mobbed up, Bulger’s childhood friend John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) joined the FBI. He reaches out to Bulger’s brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch), a state senator and one of the most powerful men in Boston, to make contact with Bulger and persuade him to become an informant. Amazingly, Bulger agrees, but as the story progresses through the 1980s, it soon becomes apparent that Bulger is just manipulating Connolly to his own ends and using the FBI as his personal intelligence agency as he consolidates power.

After spending most of the last decade playing over-the-top characters like Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and whatever nutso man-child character Tim Burton was peddling that year, the buzz was that Black Mass represented Depp’s return to serious acting. He is easily the best thing about the movie. His Bulger is introduced as a demonic presence in silhouette, and he seems to remain partially in shadow the entire film, even in scenes set in Miami’s tropical sunlight. Cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi never misses a shot to make Depp’s partially shaved noggin look like a death’s head skull perched atop his ubiquitous black leather jacket. Edgerton, who is excellent at playing men blind to their own flaws, follows Depp around like a puppy as he is drawn deeper into the world of criminals he’s supposed to be fighting. Also excellent are Kevin Bacon as a Connolly’s FBI boss, and Cumberbatch, whose Southie accent is so perfect you’d think he grew up there.

Unfortunately, the screenplay is not up to the level of the performances and cinematography. Part of the problem is that the real story itself is kind of flat, with no peaks and valleys, just a slow slide into degradation for everyone involved. No matter how well-rendered Bulger is, he’s still a singularly loathsome individual who may or may not have been pushed into full blown psychosis during more than 50 LSD experiments he volunteered for while in Alcatraz. Watching him run roughshod over the corrupt city government and weak-willed FBI agents is like reading about World War II’s Eastern front—you don’t want to root for either Hitler or Stalin. It makes for a bleak view of humanity dressed up in tacky 70s clothes and some of the worst hairstyles ever committed to film. But if you’re a fan of gangster movies and/or Depp, Black Mass is the best dose you’re going to get this year.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

The Gift

Like all right-thinking Americans, I am a Turner Classic Movies (TCM) junkie. It’s the default channel I turn to when the cable box is on. By sheer coincidence, the night I returned from a screening of The Gift, I turned on TCM just in time to catch the beginning of Shadow of a Doubt, the 1943 film that Alfred Hitchcock considered his finest work.

Writer/director/producer/actor Joel Edgerton has clearly studied Hitchcock, and his new film The Gift carries much of Shadow of a Doubt in its DNA. It begins with a young couple Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) buying a Southern California, midcentury modern home. They’re relocating from Chicago because Simon has a prestigious, high-paying new job in “corporate security.”

You just know they’ll soon come to regret those huge windows that blur the lines between outdoors and indoors. They’re shopping at Ikea, when someone recognizes Simon: Gordon “Gordo” Mosley, played by our director Edgerton. Simon grew up in the area before leaving for college and career, and Gordo was a high school friend. Or maybe “friend” is an overstatement. Simon seems pretty reluctant to talk to him, and reveals to Robyn that the kids used to call him “Gordo the Weirdo.”

Writer/director Joel Edgerton stars in The Gift

Edgerton’s portrayal of Gordo is one of the best things about The Gift. He’s an Iraq War veteran, plain-spoken, and down-to-earth, but somehow unsettling. He’s just a little too stare-y, and his simple statements like “Good people deserve good things” seem to carry sinister subtexts. He gives off a weird stalker vibe even before the first unsolicited gift arrives at Simon and Robyn’s house.

But then again, nearly everyone in the film is giving off bad vibes. Robyn’s got major problems. She had a miscarraige back in Chicago and is the only person in the film who doesn’t drink copious amounts of wine, because she’s in recovery for unspecified substance abuse. Employees at Simon’s new company are clearly a bunch of status-obsessed creeps. And Simon is the worst of all. Bateman’s finest work has been as Michael Bluth on Arrested Development. Much of the show’s comedy comes from the fact that the Bluth family is hopelessly entitled and clueless to their own foolishness. Michael is the most sympathetic of the lot, but that’s only by comparison with the other characters. Imagine how annoying Michael Bluth would be if you knew him in real life, and you’ve got a sense of how Bateman’s performance plays out in The Gift.

Gordo makes references to “letting bygones be bygones,” and as his presence in their lives grows more insistent and sinister, Robyn wants to know what kind of history he and Simon have. In Shadow of a Doubt‘s, opening scene, Hitch makes sure the audience knows that Joseph Cotten is not the good-hearted Uncle Charlie his family thinks he is. The simple tension created by the informational asymmetry between the audience and the characters imbues every one of Uncle Charlie’s innocuous actions with a sinister undertone. Edgerton attempts the opposite. He wants you to wonder who is the real bad guy, Gordo The Weirdo, Simon, California start-up culture, or maybe even us, the audience.

The Gift is a tricky film to review, because I think Edgerton has his heart in the right place. He clearly wants to do some classical suspense filmmaking, and his influences are pointing him in the right directions. And yet, this film comes off as less a Hitchcockian thriller than as a low-rent Gone Girl. As with last year’s David Fincher hit, the real fear the film is tapping into is the failing middle class’ economic anxiety. Simon seems to shun Gordo because he’s a reminder of Simon’s working-class past, and Gordo goes to great lengths to fake affluence. But The Gift lacks either Fincher’s talent for dense plotting or Hitchcock’s elegance. Long passages in the middle seem repetitive, as Edgerton leans on jump-scares over and over. And the less said about the ending, the better.

If you’re a fan of suspense, and want to support original material, give The Gift a whirl. Edgerton’s a gifted actor, and shows promise behind the camera. Here’s hoping the pieces come together better in his next outing.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Film Review: The Rover

For films and literature about dystopian societies, there’s no better setting than England (Nineteen Eighty-Four, Children of Men, Never Let Me Go, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, V for Vendetta…). But when it comes to post-apocalyptic locations, the place to (not) be is Australia (on the strength of Mad Max and The Road Warrior and even Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome alone, not to mention the classic On the Beach and Tank Girl). Perhaps it’s the way Australia already seems like a post-apocalyptic place, with its natural wasteland scenery of the Outback, its racially and ethnically troubled society, and its mondo-poisonous animal kingdom. Plus, the events of the pre-apocalyptic film The Last Wave could take place tomorrow, and it wouldn’t be a bit surprising.

Add The Rover to the antipodean eschatological list. The film, starring Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson, takes place Down Under “ten years after the collapse.” Eric (Pearce) goes into a way station in the middle of nowhere to get something to drink. A group of outlaws (Scoot McNairy, David Field, and Tawanda Manyimo), on the run from a violent robbery, wreck their truck and steal Eric’s car. Eric, desperate to recover his car for unknown reasons, goes in hot pursuit. A man the criminals left behind for dead, Rey (Pattinson), is grievously injured but goes on the chase as well. Eric and Rey find common purpose but have disparate agendas.

The script (David Michôd and Joel Edgerton) is assembled in deliberate, stripped-down fashion. Each plot thread comes together slowly but surely. The film drives right into the story, then explains its world slowly and only partly. Brief bouts of dialog punctuate long stretches of silence. As director, Michôd’s long takes consider the land and the survivors’ place in it. Antony Partos’ spare, foreboding, primal score takes up instruments seemingly one at a time: percussion, piano, euphonium, bass, tin whistle.

Post-apocalyptic Australia, with car chases over endless, uninhabited highways, concern over the price of petrol, a plot fueled by vengeance, a violent, once-civilized loner you root for in spite of yourself: No, it’s not one of George Miller’s Mad Max films, though there’s no reason you couldn’t pretend it’s an unacknowledged prequel. That said, The Rover is more Mad Max than The Road Warrior. The harsh action is closer to the brutality of the original than the gonzo sequences from its sequel. (And, it must be noted, Eric drives a sedan, not a DIY armored supercharger.) Emotionally, too, The Rover mimics the existential angst of Mad Max.

In fact, The Rover may be the most depressing, black-mooded film seen in some time. I think I recall one moment of levity, in the first five minutes, before the shape of the movie came into focus. Michôd and company challenge you to keep pulling for Eric amid his relentless, Ahabian quest for his car. He takes no prisoners who don’t serve his purpose. You’ll pull for him because we are inculcated to cheer for the protagonist. But The Rover, when all is said and done, retroactively positions Eric less antihero and more … well, someone both more and less sympathetic than he appeared.

The script paints the mourning at the core of The Rover, and cinematographer Natasha Braier proves the point: Eric and Rey, after the fall, face to face in a dry and waterless place. “If you don’t learn to fight, your death is going to come real soon,” Eric warns Rey. Hilarious!