A Star is Born

A Star is Born is a classic story of a young ingenue and a veteran star who fall madly in love with each other. However, as the relationship leads the ingenue to greater and greater heights the veteran finds (and it is always a 'his') his career starting to diminish which only exacerbates his addiction and self-destructive behavior. While the 1937 original has inspired countless imitations it's also had three official remakes with the last two trading in Hollywood for the music industry. This version sees Bradley Cooper in the Kris Khristofferson role from 1976, in addition to also writing and directing the film. His ingenue comes in the form of Ally, an aspiring singer with a natural talent for song-writing, here played by Lady Gaga.

Previous adaptations have generally split the focus between its male and female leads either evenly or in favour of the leading lady. However here Cooper's drug-addled country rock star Jackson Maine takes centre stage, occupying the majority of screen time and serving as the audience POV. It's an interesting choice from a storytelling perspective though it's not helped by the fact that Jackson is such a thoroughly unlikable character. A typical hard-drinking, drug abusing rock star who stumbles through every interaction yet also feels the need to dominate every scene. That becomes a problem when it comes to Ally's career, if not their entire relationship.

What at first begins as a mutual appreciation of talent and personality quickly becomes a need for Jackson to elevate Ally, regardless of her feelings on the matter. While it's sweet in intent Jackson's method's boarder on obsessive. Having his assistant relentlessly stalk Ally until she agrees to attend his show whereby he pressures her to perform an unrehearsed duet in front of a ravenous crowd. Because this is a movie this obviously goes down a treat rather than the traumatic humiliation it has the potential to be. But if A Star is Born expects us to embrace a little cinematic magic then it's at painful odds with the first hours, grounded realistic tone. Even if that first hour is the most earnest believable and entertaining section of the film overall.

That it takes a full hour to just complete the first act should give some indication of the films structural problems. While the 1976 version has it's faults it at least spends considerable time showing Esther and John building a life with each other. Cooper's version though is in such a rush to run through it's story beats that everything about his and Ally's relationship post-first act feels hollow and empty. From Ally making his rural house feel like a home entirely off-screen to the casual decision to make Jack play backing guitar because suddenly he's a has-bean. None of it feels real or affecting or meaningful and by the end you're just waiting for the wrap-up.

Cooper's A Star is Born is a solid directorial debut but even as it's well aware of it's own legacy it's a shockingly mediocre version of a twelve note song that been playing on repeat for almost a century. With the sole distinction of perhaps having the best songs of any of its predecessors.

Suspira

Well, call me the outlier on this one. Maybe it's bias, maybe it's just having not seen the original (yes, I know bad cinephile) but Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria is the real deal. A remake that doesn't try to imitate the 1977 giallo classic by Dario Argento but instead retell it's story with a fundamentally different style and tone. It's an approach which gives the film an intensity of it's own, undiminished by comparisons to its predecessors.

Guadagino both retains and leans into the original setting of 1977 Germany where former Mennonite Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) joins the Markos Dance Academy, a school specializing in interpretive dance and led by Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). When she arrive though Susie finds the school distraught at the disappearance of student Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz), last seen visiting her psychiatrist Dr Klemperer (also played by Swinton under the psudonym Lutz Ebersdorf). As Susie rises through the ranks of Markos's dancers she finds herself closer and closer to the truth that drove Patricia away. Blanc and the other teachers at the school are witches and intend her Susie to be the subject of their approaching sabbath.

The relocation to Berlin, rich with its Bahaus-style architecture, compliments Guadagnino's heavily bleached colour scheme. Devoid of primary colours the film takes on an atmosphere of brutality that sharply punctuates scenes of injury and body horror. Meanwhile the chaos of living in a city literally divided by the Cold War reflects Guadagnino's magical realist approach to the atmosphere at the Markos Academy. The witchcraft at play is mysterious and violent but also understated, used in a purely practical, even mundane capacity. The witches themselves are slyly knowing figures but ones riddled by insecurity, frivolity and ego. Even the momentous act of appointing a leader is handled with the kind of simplistic routine one applies to writing a cleaning rota.

Into this mundanity comes Swinton's Blanc, one of the few characters to adopt a genuinely ethereal air. Swinton's weighty prescence gives the character a commanding air that stays with her even as she grows progressively more vulnerable. The counterweight to her performance is Susie, the innocent ingenue unaware of the power within her that only grows as the film proceeds. It's the kind of role that, after three Fifty Shades films, Dakota Johnson excels in. Imbuing Susie with a sense of uncanny awareness to her initial waifishness. It gives her a compelling screen presence that suitability masks the fact that her character is little more than a cipher for much of the film. A subject of the plot rather than a participant in.

Supporting turns are delivered by Moretz and Mia Goth (last seen playing much the same role in A Cure for Wellness). Goth's permanently wet pout gives a vulnerable edge to what is primarily an expeditionary role. Moretz on the other hand is delivering a much more tensile performance as Patricia. Filled with a manic energy and paranoia that her flimsy German accent does nothing to diminish. Indeed Patricia's ambiguous identity only reinforces her unstable and traumatised persona.

Guadagino makes a questionable choice in opening the film with Patricia raving about the school. As if to add a hint of psychological ambiguity to a story concerned with very real psychological threats. It feels shoehorned in to allow the inclusion of Dr Klemperer who's story and themes gel little with the main plot of the film. While it's a heartfelt performance and it allows the characters to articulate the plot it's hard to ignore the fact that Klemperer could have been lifted from the film entirely with little consequence.

Then again the qualities of Suspira have little to do with plot and more to do with atmosphere and performance. In that sense Guadagnino has delivered a thoroughly atmospheric experience. Filled with tension, intrigue, pain and horror Suspiria is a worthy successor to it's namesake and one of the best films of 2018. An experience like no other.

Salsa Shark's Back Slate: Enter the Dragon

One of the chief concerns of any film critic is always; Have I seen the essentials? Not just the classics or the tiresome '1000 Films to See Before You Die' but any film considered formative to the medium. With a keen enough mind,  pretty much any film has the potential to widen our understanding of cinema. And while film is a relatively young medium it's one that has produced more work that is possible for any individual to see (in fact due to poor preservation there are some films that are simply not possible for anyone to see). So inevitably we all have our blind-spots, our films to put on the back slate to get around to some time. I've accrued more than my fair share over the years; essential films taking up space on the DVD shelf or the Netflix queue. So from time to time I'm going to recount my experiences crossing these off the list in whatever way I happen to (though preferably on the cinema screen).

With the anniversary of Bruce Lee's death coming up Watershed hosted a screening off Enter The Dragon, complete with introduction from Timon Singh. It's a film that's been on my hit-list for some time but circumstances have just got in the way. Arguably the seminal film of the late Bruce Lee's career Enter the Dragon has permeated the pop culture, even if only for Lee's involvement.

With the benefit of hindsight it's easy to see what a boost Lee's presence is to the film's legacy. Taken on it's own it's a fairly schlocky example of Kung fu-sploitation films that popped up during the 70s and 80s. It wastes time splitting the focus between multiple protagonists, none of whom possess Lee's charisma. The story is surprisingly bloated for what should be a simple martial arts tournament, layering multiple threads around not only Lee's character but also the supporting cast made-up primarily of Jim Kelly and John Saxon. Unfortunately the script never finds anything substantive for it's antagonist Han, leaving him with the one-note characterisation of a mere drug baron with a little Asian flair.

But then this is less a film about character and story and more about style and action and on that front the film 100% delivers. Lee is always a compelling screen presence and here his sense of calm as he approaches each new fight leaves you with a sense of confidence Even during the dialogue driven scenes he manages to invest pathos and even a little humour into the exchange. So much so that when it comes for him to throw down it feels like a shared victory as he takes out waves upon waves of bad guys.

The film's style definitely borrows more from the blaxsploitation genre than anything native to Chinese cinema. With Lalo Schifrin's score rich with elements of funk combined with Eastern string instruments. It's feels like the birth of its genre which speaks to much of the impact of Enter the Dragon. In the ends this is a film that is beloved as an artifact in the history of cinema. Not only as the Bruce Lee film but also the film that introduced the world to a rough, contemporary new version of martial arts film. One that aimed to break convention and define action cinema for decades to come.

The Tale

The Tale is that rare film that captures its subject matter so effectively that it entirely justifies putting a trigger warning up front. So for the benefit of those who may be sensitive to the subject this film does cover topic of grooming and child sexual abuse. While that might put some off I think it's important to note that it may be the best attempt to cover such material in a long time. In no small part due to the role of the film-maker behind it.

Said film-maker is Jennifer Fox, primarily a documentarian, who a few years ago underwent a reexamination of her childhood after her mother discovered a story she had written as a teenager. The story chronicled a summer she spent at riding camp under the keen tutelage of the glamorous and towering Mrs G. It would soon be revealed to Jennifer that Mrs G was engaged in an affair with Bill, the camp's riding instructor, an affair that they would bring the then thirteen-year-old into.

While much of the film is about romanticizing the past the film, sensibly, never tries to match the rose-tinted view Jennifer previously held towards her abusers. The Tale pulls no punches in the the grim kind of pressure placed on a young girl and the ugliness of her abuse. Event the scenes of Bill's attempts at 'courtship' are tainted with a strong sense of tension as you wait for the penny to drop. It's made clear from the start that Jennifer has tried to romanticize this, viewing Mrs G as a beautiful giant of a woman appropriately played by the 6ft 2in Elizabeth Debicki.

In effect Jennifer has rewritten this incident as an exciting, coming-of-age experience and only now, with the perspective of time can she see the abuse for what it really was. The creeping doubt that slowly consumes Laura Dern's performance as Jennifer is a subtle but powerful thing to watch. So much of her character is admirable; accomplished film-maker, respected educator, self-confident independent woman. And yet we are left to wonder how much of that came from this horrifying period in her life. After confronting both the event and her abusers we find Jennifer left, not broken, but certainly empty.

At it's core The Tale is a film about the unreliability of memory. About how our distorted view of the then influences our now. But does that mean the person we are now is any less real for being based on a falsehood? The answer is no. The forcibly mature 13-year-old Jennifer who sees herself as the hero of her tale is no less real than the shaken forty-something today.

It's the kind of perspective that could only come from having a director so close to the events of the film. Fox takes ownership of what happened even if she cannot bring her abusers to justice. All she can do is tell her story and she has done so powerfully.

Hereditary: An Frightening Lineage

Hereditary is one of those films that proves the ability of a talented director and cast to elevated a well-intentioned but ultimately flawed work. All the elements are in place for an atmospheric and gripping horror filled with sympathetic and complex characters. Everything except for the actual story which starts out from an interesting place but just can't quite bring itself to a satisfying conclusion. Unfortunately this means that any exploration of what's wrong with Hereditary means a discussion of events which occur late in the film. So if you want to go into the film as blind as possible then I would advise looking away now.

The plot of Hereditary focuses on miniatures artist Annie Graham as she attempts to process her mother's passing. Annie's mother, we are told, was a difficult and secretive woman who kept many friends and participated in activities that Annie was kept far away from. To compound the matter she showed an uncharacteristic affection for Annie's daughter Charlie, played by newcomer Milly Shapiro. Charlie is an awkward and vulnerable child who fears that now her grandmother is dead no one will be able to look after her. It a fear that is soon realized as tragedy continues to befall the Graham family, forcing Annie to try to communicate with ghosts in order to understand her grief. However by doing so finds herself falling deeper into a trap that her mother laid for her.

All of which comes together as really compelling, edge-of-your seat horror film stuff.The turns which this story take are really surprising and frightening and all the while you're heart is going out to this grieving mother and the family that is falling apart around her. But eventually the film reaches it's final act and feels the need to give all of these strange occurrences a very specific explanation that is neither satisfying or coherent. For one thing it falls into a lazy horror trope, for another it relies too much on contrivance and finally it just doesn't seem to have anything to do with what the film has presented itself as being about. From the start Hereditary is a film about Annie's grief over her mother and how that has led her to neglect her family to the point of self-destruction. But then to turn it around and say that this is all actually someone working behind the scenes. It just undermines what the rest of the film has been about.

The best horror films derive all their best moments from simple, but deep premises. A Quiet Place is about horror through silence, Get Out is about racial commodification, Drag Me to Hell is about being dragged to hell. But nothing in Hereditary is about what Annie is inheriting from her mother, she isn't a part of the conspiracy her mother is involved in, she doesn't even know about it until the very end. And once you start pulling at that thread the rest of the film starts to fall apart; the big scares and story points and especially the creepy iconography like the miniatures and the performances from Milly Shapiro and Alex Wolf as her older brother. These feel less like parts of a single, haunting idea and more like random elements thrown in to amp up the creep factor. It's a bit like the Annabel doll from The Conjuring, it has nothing to do with the rest of the film but it's creepy and iconic so why not throw it in. 

This isn't to say that the film is a total bust. I think Ari Aster is a really effective director of horror, his sense of suspense is the reason I was on my seat so much throughout the film. And he gives the film a very unique visual aesthetic with the melding of Annie's miniatures with physical scenery. It all adds to the creepy vibe even if, ultimately it doesn't amount to anything. I can totally see this guy going on the payroll at Universal if they ever try that Dark Universe again.

Toni Collette is also a big part of why this film works. I know 'barely-together mom' is pretty much her bread-and-butter but she always finds a new twist to take on it and this is no exception. Annie is a detached, career-focused mother and we haven't really seen that done with the more kooky artist type. She brings real believably to some of the bigger leaps of logic her character makes and more importantly she's someone you can invest in emotionally. When things start going wrong for her it's not just frightening it's outright heart-breaking. Like I said there's a lot that Hereditary has going for it. It's just massively let down by a stroy that could have done with a few passes through an experienced editor. 

What Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri gets Wrong about Police Corruption

If Hannah Arendt can coin the ‘banality of evil’ then someone must have claimed the buffoonery of evil, even if only to refer to characters sprung from the mind of Martin McDonough. If you’re familiar with the director’s previous work, you’ll know what I mean. In Bruges the director introduced us to two squabbling hitmen as they grew bored on a European getaway. Seven Psychopaths featured a sextuplet of amoral thieves and killers repeatedly undone by their own stupidity. Now his latest film; Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri tackles a police force rife with incompetence and violent misconduct.

One of the few genuinely great working-class stories to emerge in the last few years, Three Billboards…centres on Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), a bereaved single mother who hires the titular billboards to chastise the local police force. Singling out Police Chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) for failing to catch the man who raped and murdered her daughter. In Mildred’s eyes the local police are ‘too busy torturing black folk’ to solve the case. Said torturer being his loyal lapdog Officer Jason Dixon, whose crimes Willoughby nervously dismisses.

Now, make no mistake the film is very good. Funny, poignant and dark, with outstanding performances from McDormand and Rockwell. Yet this is another instance of a white director, using a white lead, to cover an issue which predominantly affects people of colour. Early last year the American Public Health Association published a report that found that Black and Hispanic males were almost twice as likely to be killed by police force than their white counterparts. While Mildred’s rage over her daughter’s death is legitimate it pales in comparison to the 55% of black homicides that go unsolved in the US every year. McDonough is a talented storyteller but his distance from the issue inevitably leads him to belie it. Predominantly in the way he frames Willoughby and Dixon.

Admittedly Harrelson can play Willoughby as an authoritarian brute, bearing down on Mildred in an interrogation room, delivering threats to ruin her life. All to quickly though the film will undercut this performance with reminders of his humanity, his vulnerability. He is introduced to us as a family man, he spends time with Mildred earnestly insisting that he wants to find her daughter’s killer. And then there’s the kicker, he has a terminal illness. It feels like at every step we’re encouraged to sympathise with this spineless brute. A man who not only enables Dixon’s crimes but lavishes praise on him. Honestly at times he feels like a character from a different film. One that didn’t feel like it had so much to say about systemic racism within the police.

                              

The film takes a similar approach to Dixon, easily the more reprehensible of the two. Painted by his history as a violent and unrepentant racist, having previously tortured a black suspect during interrogation. Yet we crucially never see any of this take place. The only act of racial profiling he commits during the film’s timeline is the off-screen arrest of Mildred’s friend played by Amanda Warren. When he actually shares screen-time with two African American characters they both display open contempt for him without concern for any reproach.  Remember, that this is set in a country where black children have been shot dead for playing with toy guns. Granted one of these characters is the new police chief and seeing him toss Dixon to the kerb is fully intended as a satisfying moment of catharsis. However, the ease with which Clarke Peters’ character can take charge of a police department supposedly mired in systemic racism one again betrays McDonough’s naivety on the subject. 

Despite what we are told about Officer Dixon his on-screen characterisation, much like Willoughby’s, feels designed to undermine his authority and engender sympathy. Members of the public freely insult him, he lives at home with his mother and whenever confronted with his wrongdoing he fearfully denies it. He’s a terrified dog ashamed to have soiled the carpet, but with no capacity to clean it. In short, he’s a far cry from real-life officers like Brian Encinia; the state trooper who violently apprehended Sandra Bland shortly before she died in custody or former Officer Philip Braisford who shot a suspect with an AR-15 as he begged for his life earlier this year. These are officers who confidently committed violent acts and remain unapologetic about it to this day.  No provocation, no denials and no remorse. That’s the kind of misconduct McDonough supposedly seeks to comment upon and woefully fails at. 

Now, I’m not saying I wanted Three Billboards… to feature scenes of violence against African Americans. In case it’s not clear I see enough of that on the news. And yes, we should afford McDonough some artistic license to deviate from reality. After all, no one was expecting him to remake Serpico. It’s only natural that characters like Willoughby and Dixon should warrant fleshing-out, even humanising. But comparing these two goofballs to the actual cases of police misconduct rings not of humanizing them, but romanticising. Comical romanisation to be sure, on par with say, McDonough making a version of Spotlight where the priests acted like Pepe Le Pew. But making lazy, corrupt and violent cops the butt of the joke is a long way off examining the incendiary issure here. In doing so McDonough blurs the reality behind the devastation these corrupt institutions wreak on communities. Mischaracterising both the officers responsible and the issue Three Billboards… seeks to shine a light on.

Molly's Game

Not to get too personal but I run hot and cold on Aarron Soarkin as a writer. He's an obvious talent, writing slick, hyper-articulate characters who nonetheless feel like real and believable people. But at the same time he's obviously writing these characters from the limitations of a white male, establishment perspective. That's not a bad thing, it's worked like gangbusters when turned on the elitism of Harvard or the egotism of Silicon Valley. Hell, I've only seen about 1.5 episodes of the West Wing and yeah, Soarkin really nails his idealised vision of an intellectually-driven White House (it was a more innocent time). Pretty much anything bad I have to say about him comes from Newsroom where it really feels like Soarkin's worst instincts were allowed to flourish. All the female characters are, to varying degrees, painted as ditzy drama queens. The 'recent history' gimmick makes the whole thing feel dated and, on occasion, exploitative of real events. And the show is slathered in Soarkin's saccharin self-righteousness surrounding the wholesome integrity of the honest 'objective' news media.

I bring all of this up because Molly's Game, Soarkin's directorial debut, showcases him at both his very best and his very worst. Soarkin's almost supernatural ability to wring compelling drama out of the self-inflicted issues facing very privileged people is still very much present. As Molly Bloom, Jessica Chastain gives a nuanced portrayal of a self-made entrepreneur with all the drives and vulnerabilities of a believable human being. The film starts with Molly at her lowest moment, a crippling accident that ruins her career as an Olympic skier. Set adrift from her life's dream she takes a year out in L.A. and gets a job assisting a sleazy businessman running his high stakes poker game. With nothing but her wit and ability to make connections she quickly takes over the game, attracting bigger players and higher stakes. She takes control but her control is always a fragile thing, repeatedly endangered by the egos of insecure men and the interference of less than reputable gangs.

This is all told after the fact by Molly as both narration from her book and information relayed to Molly's lawyer Charlie Jafferty, played by the ever-admirable Idris Elba. In typical Soarkin fashion we find ourselves flitting back and forth through Molly's timeline. But unlike the experienced directors who previously handled his work Soarkin is unable to properly provide a coherent rhythm to his storytelling. Just when Molly is getting into her first poker game we suddenly flit back to her childhood, everything builds to Molly's court hearing in the third act but all the big emotional courtroom performance comes about twenty-minutes earlier. For the most part Soarkin's direction is solid, the man's crafted enough walk-and-talk scenes to know how to shoot one. It's surprising that for such a talented writer, the let down would be in the storytelling.

That's not to suggest his usual bad habits aren't on display her. With Chastain at the driving seat Molly is indeed a formidable creature; intelligent, driven and charming. All too often though her flaws come not from herself but from the judgement of the men around her. Jafferty frequently puts her down, undermines her and outright talks over her in one of the most Soarkiny of Soarkin's monologues. Worse still all her ambition, her drive for control, is written off as Daddy issues, patronizingly explained by her father, played by Kevin Costner. It's as if Soarkin goes out of his way to build a great character, only to tear her down.

What makes these scenes worse is that, while the dialogue is still sharp, Soarkin's speechifying inevitably gets the better of him. So much so that any real emotion that might have come from a heartfelt family reunion or a defiant statement of principle gets lost in a whirlwind of verbosity and literature references. It doesn't help that at no point do we empathise with Molly's unwillingness to rat out her players. All of whom are presented as leches, liars or outright sociopaths. Pride comes from a lot of places, but not protecting the people who sell you down the river.

This is not to say the film is without merit. Chastain practically carries the thing with nothing but her charm and vulnerability. Seeing her maneuver around Hollywood stars, Wall Street fat cats and Russsian Oligarch is the fun, goofy look at excess wealth that's impossible to dislike. But it all builds to such an anticlimax that it inevitably disappoints. One for Soarkin completionists only.