Flick of The Day: Little Miss Sunshine

It is a rare enough thing to come across a film that you see without any preconceptions or expectations. It is rarer still for such a film to be joyously fantastic with every frame from beginning to end. Little Miss Sunshine is such a film and remains a personal favourite some 7 years after I first encountered it. It combines a quirky tale of modern family life with a diverse and vibrant cast of characters. It's funny, sad, and wickedly life affirming throughout.

Sheryl, the divine Toni Collette, is an overburdened mother in Albuquerque, where she lives with her precocious daughter Olive played by the excellent Abigail Breslin, her delightfully huffy and unhappy in the way only teenagers can be son Dwayne, played by Paul Dano and her husband Richard, a self help guru with a clue played by the always watch-able Greg Kinnear. The family is rounded out by Grandpa Edwin, a foul mouthed Alan Arkin who enjoys snorting heroin and speaking his mind. Into this family unit steps Sheryl's brother Frank played by Steve Carell, the nations foremost Proust scholar who has recently attempted suicide and needs a place to stay. Olive has been prepping for her upcoming début as a beauty queen in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. Due to a series of complications, the family are forced to set out across the country in a yellow VW bus to reach the pageant in Redondo beach, California.  Despite each having their own problems and goals, they band together to get Olive to her goal. Dwayne has taken a vow of silence until he becomes a test pilot, Richard is trying to sell his self-help programme and Frank is struggling with depression.

 The real strength of the movie is Michael Arndt's script which is just packed with humour and carries and emotional punch not often seen in an ostensibly comic film. He creates a world and a cast of character that are a pleasure to spend time with. The dialogue ebbs and flows with a ring of authenticity, and the stellar cast reflects this quality. As an ensemble, the cast are very well chosen. There are no weak performances but a special mention must go to Alan Arkin who is superb as Edwin. 

From the opening sequence where the various characters are introduced at a family dinner, there is a sense that everyone has a real purpose and motivation in the story and that their actions which may seem random will eventually pay off at the story's denouement. Making this effort to ensure that the audience knows and likes the characters is time well spent before we set off on our road trip across the south-west United States. The various foibles of the cast are ripe for comedy and this is a very  funny film. The humour is carefully balanced with the emotional depth of real human drama. These are real people not comic caricatures.

A superb film, from beginning to end the script is packed with humour and pathos. The ensemble cast are perfectly chosen and play their parts with an obvious love for the role. Even the soundtrack with cuts from Devotchka and Sufjan Stevens is apt. If you haven't seen this film yet, you really should.

Flick of The Day: For Ellen

Paul Dano is one of the best young actors working in Hollywood at the moment. I first saw him in the excellent Little Miss Sunshine as the misanthropic angst ridden teen Dwayne. Since then he starred opposite Daniel Day Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood in the duel roles of Paul and Eli Sunday. He was last seen on Irish screen's in last year's Looper with Joseph Gordon Levitt. Today's flick sees him playing the aimless Joby Taylor, an indie rocker with a young daughter he has never met in So Yong Kim's subdued drama.

Joby is the misanthropic lead singer of a band that appears to be struggling for survival though this is only hinted at. We meet him as he drives through the night after a gig to meet his lawyer to finalise his divorce. His lawyer Fred, played by Jon Heder of Napoleon Dynamite fame, is equally unsure of himself in the world but in a much different way. He lives at home with his mother and some of the funniest scenes involve the interplay between the mismatched pair. Joby is on the point of signing the divorce papers when he realises that he is signing away his right to see his daughter Ellen. Though he has never met Ellen, played by a precocious Shaylena Mandigo, he tries to make contact and create a bond. The scenes shared between the two are touching and filled with hope of a better relationship. Yet time and again Joby is unable to deal with his own problems. Ultimately he wants to do what is best for his daughter regardless of what that might mean for him. Will he continue to run away or will he face up to his responsibilities?

There is a sparse quality to the snow filled scenery of the small town in which Joby finds himself and its empty loneliness reflects his mood. It is obvious he is not a bad guy just immature and unable to function outside of his own little world as a touring musician. It is obvious that Joby felt that the years he put in as an aspiring rock star in LA would pay off and that as he drifts toward his late 20's it may not happen. At one point he justifies his absence to Ellen by saying that he couldn't give up his record deal. He now has a second chance whether he will take it or not is thrust of the film.

While it is an interesting story to tell at first, the film is ultimately not fully satisfying because by the end Joby has made no real progress as a human being. The world is filled with bad parents why should Joby's tale be any more compelling?

Flick of The Day: Moonrise Kingdom

There are few mainstream film-makers that are as “ Marmite” as Wes Anderson. For those who love his work, I included, his films are a blend of fine storytelling, quirky wry humour and a distinctive visual style. For those who don’t, the visual style and humour are undone by their off kilter sensibility. This view is often summed up by an exasperated “Oh that film is so annoying”.  His best and probably best loved film is The Royal Tenenbaums while Rushmore, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Darjeeling Limited and The Life Acquatic with Steve Zissou have all found a willing audience. This latter film remains my personal favourite, a beautiful and deeply funny look at the life of renowned oceanographer Zissou played by the incomparable Bill Murray.   It would be fair then to say that I was looking forward to Anderson’s latest film, Moonrise Kingdom. 

Opening with a typically melancholic credit sequence, we are introduced to the inhabitants of the island of New Penzance, an idyllic New England community in 1965. These include the Bishop family led by Walt and Laura, a pair of duelling attorneys played by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand and their “troubled” teenage daughter Suzy, an excellent Kara Hayward. There is also the Island’s policeman Captain Sharp, played by Bruce Willis in fine form and a troop of scouts at Camp Ivanhoe led by Scout Master Ward, a hilariously earnest Edward Norton.

One fine morning, the Scout Master awakes to find that one of his charges has flown the coup in the night, in a funny scene reminiscent of The Shawshank Redemption. We soon learn that the missing boy is a 12 year old orphan named Sam Shakusky who has disappeared off into the hinterland of the island. He has however not gone alone and is joined as a runaway by his lady love Kara Bishop, much to the chagrin of her father Walt. The pair have been pen pals since meeting the previous Summer at a church performance of Noye’s Fludde and have resolved to run away together to escape their uneasy family life. Sam has absconded with enough camping equipment to enable a nomadic existence while Kara has brought a stack of her favourite books and borrowed her brother’s record player. Together they set off for a secluded cove which they name Moonrise Kingdom.

Of course, they are soon captured by the good hearted Captain Sharp and the deputised scouts. Walt vows that the two shall never see each other again and social services in the form of Tilda Swinton are soon on their way to take young Sam into care. However fate in the form of an epic storm intervenes. Will the island survive its onslaught? Will Scout Master Ward lead his troop to safety? Will Sam and Kara be reunited or will he be dragged off to be a ward of the state? Time will tell.

Anderson has assembled another fine ensemble cast for this film. Each actor brings an undoubted love for the script and their character to the table. Bruce Willis gives his most nuanced performance in years and that’s a sentence I did not expect to write. Bill Murray plays what now seems to be a recurring performance as a cuckolded husband in Wes Anderson films, that together with Frances McDormand forms a loving if emotionally distant parent group. The real stars are the two young protagonists Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman who bring a self-assured maturity to their roles.

The real joy of the film is how Anderson, together with co-writer Roman Coppola has managed to capture the feel of a childhood summer which feels endless at the time and yet so quickly is overcome by a return to normalcy at Summer’s end.  The attention to detail and the quirky eccentric nature of his work are spellbinding in my opinion.

It is Anderson’s most complete film and I think possibly his best live-action film to date. It, like so many of his previous films, manages to transport the viewer to a time and place that they really would like to visit in real life. This is the magic of cinema.

Flick of The Day: Flight

Denzel Washington has been bringing his square jawed presence to Hollywood blockbusters for the better part of two decades. He has been one of the pre-eminent actors of his generation and yet over the last few years his films have been hit and miss. While his performances have been up to his usual high standard, the films have often not been. Sure Unstoppable was an entertaining and thankfully brief vehicle for his co-star Chris Pine and American Gangster was a fine film however the less said about the remarkably ill-advised remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 the better. I won’t even go in to the likes of The Book of Eli or Déjà Vu. What you can say is that he is a buy man with today’s flick of the day Flight being his 2^nd film of 2012 after the enjoyable if formulaic Safe House.

The film has received somewhat mixed reviews since its release on the other side of the Atlantic late last year however what has not been in doubt is the quality of Washington’s performance. It earned him a well-deserved nomination for Best Actor at the Oscars though one which he is unlikely to win given the unstoppable freight train that is Daniel Day-Lewis in award season. Washington plays the alliteratively named Whit Whitaker, a full time commercial airline pilot with an equally full time alcohol and drug addiction. We first meet Whitaker on the morning after the night before, slumbering in a messy hotel room strewn with empties with a naked woman beside him.

He is soon up and about and after a quick line of blow he is out the door where we are shocked to learn, or would be if we hadn't chosen to see the film, that Whip is an airline captain and the aforementioned woman a stewardess. Bleary eyed and under the influence he takes control of his plane for the short hop flight from Orlando to Atlanta. There we meet his young co-pilot who frowns and tut-tuts but otherwise does nothing. After guiding the plane through some early turbulence, a scene which establishes that half-cut or not Whitaker can fly a plane better than most, Whip settles down to a triple vodka and orange juice before a light nap which allows the young co-pilot to take over. However the plane suffers a mechanical failure and Whip is woken to the sight of his plane in a rapidly descending nose dive with the earth rushing up to meet him. It is perhaps one of the most spectacular air crash scenes since Tom Hanks was Cast Away, which is incidentally also a Robert Zemeckis film. Of course, Whip manages to avert disaster by flipping the plane upside down and flying inverted thus avoiding the nose dive. The plane glides to a landing in a field with only 6 casualties. Whip is a hero, at least until the toxicology reports show that he was drunk and high while driving the plane. However events and people begin to conspire to keep Whip out of trouble for their own ends. We meet his dealer, an entertaining turn from John Goodman. There is his well-meaning union rep played by Bruce Greenwood and their appointed attorney Hugh Lang played by the always excellent Don Cheadle. Together they want to keep Whip out of prison regardless of how much they enable his alcoholism and drug addiction. Indeed perhaps the only person with his interests in mind is the recovering junkie Nicole, played by Kelly Reilly, who Whip picks up along the way.

Ultimately the film is tale of a man coming to terms with his own demons even if he has to go to great lengths before he realises the extent of his troubles. This may not be the kind of movie many people expected to see given the advertising campaign which preceded it. That’s not to say it is a bad film, it’s not, and is entirely worthy in its cause but might explain some of the negative reactions. The problem is that it is just not terribly compelling. Sure Denzel Washington is excellent but so what. There is little real drama here and a pat ending which you will see coming a mile away.

Another irritant and this is something which must be incredibly obvious if I managed to pick up on it while watching the film rather than reflecting on it afterwards, is the sheer obviousness of some of the musical cues in the film. In almost every scene the music will be a direct reference to the events on screen. Nicole is shooting up heroin; well here comes Red Hot Chilli Peppers with "Under the Bridge", a song about shooting up heroin. When John Goodman’s coke dealer arrives, guess what his signature tune is? Yes, it’s "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Stones. When Whip tries to quit drinking and pours away his remaining liquor bottles, we are treated to Bill Withers singing "Ain’t No Sunshine". When Whip does coke, we get Joe Cocker singing "Feelin’ Alright" because he does you know.

It is breath-taking how overtly obvious some of these song choices are. It could only be made worse by the addition of a commentary track telling you how to emotionally react to each scene. So there you have it, a couple of spectacular actions scenes, a broken man seeking redemption and some hackneyed musical choices, Flight.

Flick of The Day: Lincoln

There are few historical figures more clothed in the endearing embrace of the passage of time than the 16^th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. Time makes saints of the worst of men and Lincoln was a statesman and leader for the ages in his own lifetime.  In the years since his death he has become an almost mythic figure, the great emancipator and a man who symbolised all that could be borne of political will. The greatness of the United States, if such a thing can be said to exist, is tied up in men and women like Lincoln. To attempt a biographical film on his life and times is a tall order and one which Hollywood has attempted on more than one occasion. That a film-maker of the calibre of Steven Spielberg combined with a stellar cast is behind this latest effort should be a cause for excitement among cine-philes everywhere.

Eschewing, correctly in my opinion, the approach of previous directors of attempting to tell the story of Lincoln’s life’s work in favour of a focus on a brief few months toward the end of the gruelling civil war, Spielberg’s film attempts to document the passage of the 13th Amendment which abolished once and for all the abomination that was and is human slavery. We meet Lincoln on the margins of a rainy battlefield as he talks jovially with a pair of young black soldiers fighting for the Union side in that most bitter conflict. From this one scene it becomes apparent what an incredible performance Daniel Day Lewis has once again drawn forth from within himself. He inhabits the role completely down to the gait of the President. From this conversation with pair of soldiers, Lincoln resolves to pass the amendment in the democrat controlled house of representatives no matter the cost to his personal prestige or relationship with his fellow republicans.

Despite the protests of his Secretary of State, an excellent David Strathairn and his much put upon wife, a fine Sally Field, he pushes on seeking to grasp by any means necessary the votes he requires. To accomplish this, he must do two things. Firstly he has to secure the votes of his own party led by an aged Hal Holbrook who demands that a negotiated peace be sought with the confederacy. This will lead inevitably to the defeat of the bill so it must be held off. Secondly, he must procure through the use of state favours, 20 democratic votes. To this end he hires a firm of lobbyists led by Mr W.N. Bilbo, a fantastically entertaining performance from James Spader to procure the necessary votes. Yet even at this point, the passage of the bill is not assured with Lincoln having to involve the noted radical and abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, again another superb performance from Tommy Lee Jones. Were these political troubles not enough, he also suffers with a wife who grieves for her lost son and another son, Robert, played by Joseph Gordon Levitt who yearns to play his part on the battlefield. That he manages to walk this difficult personal and political path while also fighting a war along with his most trusted General, Ulysses Grant, played by the always watch-able Jared Harris, is a tale in and of itself.

There is not a single weak performance in what is an excellently assembled cast. I realize reading the above that I have yet to even praise actors of the calibre of John Hawkes, Jackie Earle Haley or Tim Blake Nelson. 

The real achievement of both Spielberg and Day Lewis is that on one hand they shake the dust off the mythic status of Lincoln and humanise him so that he may be viewed as an ordinary man with flaws and difficulties while on the other they manage to put his achievements in a proper light and eulogise them for how ground-breaking they truly were. This is proper old school Hollywood film-making on a grand scale and deserves to rewarded as such. It will be a surprise if it fails to win most of the main acting awards as the forthcoming Academy Awards and yet this is a fine year for cinema with a number of equally excellent rivals.

Flick of The Day: Zero Dark Thirty

Prior to 2008’s The Hurt Locker, director Kathryn Bigelow was perhaps best known for her 1991 surfing-bank robbers epic Point Break which although it contained the combined acting talent of Keanu Reeves and Anthony Kiedis was not without its charms. Her surprise Oscar nod ahead of ex-husband James Cameron’s unstoppably awful behemoth Avatar has since propelled her career to new heights and there was considerable anticipation ahead of the release of her new film and today’s flick of the day, Zero Dark Thirty.

The film is a dark and epic account of the decade long search for Saudi terrorist Osama Bin Laden, perhaps the most wanted man in history. Boldly proclaiming itself to be based on actual events from the opening was always bound to lead to doubters digging away at the plot and this has certainly proved to be the case.  Much of the controversy has centred on how the explicit use of torture by CIA operatives led to the capture of Bin Laden with various politicians of different hues up in arms at the idea that an American serviceman would engage in such nefarious activity and showing a shocking lack of self-awareness in the process. This does not strike me as being a particularly controversial point of view but the controversy has dogged the film since its release in the US and may yet see it miss out on Oscar nods. It would be unfair to the film to review it without tackling the issue head on.

Onward to the film itself them, and it is every bit the exciting and engaging thriller you would expect it to be. Taking the point of view of Maya, a driven CIA operative played by an excellent Jessica Chastain, we take up the chase for Bin Laden two years after the events of September 11th 2001 when the war on terror is in full swing and information is gradually being extracted via torture from various detainees in various CIA black sites. The torture scenes are every bit as uncomfortable viewing as you might imagine and the film must be lauded for asking the moral question at the heart of such actions. Personally I found the Mandingo fighting scenes in Django Unchained more unpleasant but such is the way of things. Maya learns of a man close to Bin Laden, a courier who carries his messages, known as the Kuwaiti. She is the first to spot the potential of this lead and much to the consternation of her superiors drives it above all other considerations from the streets of Pakistani slums to the deserts of Afghanistan and across the Middle East following every new lead till the events of that fateful moonless night in Abbottabad.

Chastain has justly earned plaudits for her performance as the unbending Maya but credit is due elsewhere in what is a fine cast. The various spies and managers in the CIA have a kind of grey unremarkable nature as if they could fade into the background at any given time which perhaps they do. Mark Strong is excellent as George, a high level manager who harasses his agents into delivering targets to be killed in drone strikes and is himself harangued by Maya as she seeks to push for a mission in Abbottabad. Jason Clarke is also excellent as the torturer Dan who seems to care more for his pet monkeys than the prisoners under his watch. At one point he delivers a piece of sage and yet chilling advice to Maya about not being the last person holding a dog collar when the congressional sub-committee come calling. There is also a brief turn from James Gandolfini as the slow moving CIA Director who ultimately recommends an attack.

It is I think an interesting choice to leave almost all of the significant characters either unnamed or with a first name only. It increases the feeling of authenticity, of these spies as being the kind of people who will fade into the pages of history they are writing unnamed and unknown. 

The film should suffer more from the fact that every member of the audience knows how it will end. It doesn’t really and remains fraught with tension until the final scenes perhaps in part due to the level of operational detail about that night which is included in the film for the first time. 

All in all, this is the definitive account of a dark chapter in world history and how the awful deeds of one man were brought to an end. A fine and engaging piece of modern cinema, it deserves to be recognised as such and not slandered for political ends.

Flick of The Day: Django Unchained

Ah, Quentin Tarantino, what genre will he bring his usual mix of exploitation cinema, sharp dialogue and stylised violence to next? Such is the question we have asked ourselves every few years since he burst onto the scene in 1992 with Reservoir Dogs.  His best film remains 1994's Pulp Fiction, a walk on the dark side of the Los Angeles underworld. Since then we have had Tarantino does Kung Fu, Tarantino does Exploitation and Tarantino does World War 2 with varying degrees of success. All of them had their moments of greatness but so often the director's sense of style has overburdened the film's storyline. It becomes too much.  His latest opus is a slavery themed western and is perhaps his best film in over a decade. It is perhaps the perfect match between genre and director.

In 1858 on a dark and cold Texas night, a group of chained slaves are wandering through the darkness after their new owners. Into this scene steps Dr King Schultz played by the excellent Christoph Waltz, a German ex-dentist and bounty hunter on the trail of three n'er do wells named the Brittle Brothers. One of the slaves is in a position to help the good doctor as he can put a face to the names on his list. This slave is Django, played by Jamie Foxx. After our first bout of brutal violence, Django falls into the hands of Dr King and together they set off after their bounty. A bond soon develops between the two and on their travels Django reveals that he has been separated from his wife, Broomhilda. Having captured the evil Brittles, they vow to work together to save Broomhilda from the evil clutches of Calvin Candie, her new master and owner of the Candyland plantation played with wilful abandon by Leonardo DiCaprio.

The spaghetti western as envisioned by masters like Sergio Leone, is a genre close to my heart and is obvious from the opening frame that Tarantino both loves and understands the mechanics of such films. They are an epic battle between the irredeemably bad and the indisputably good. In our case, the good are Django and King Schultz while the bad are undoubtedly Calvin and his evil house servant Stephen, a fine turn from an unrecognisable Samuel L. Jackson. Another telling trait of the Italian westerns made by Leone & Co from the 1960's onward were that they very much approached the old west from a revisionist position, it was a dark, bloody and lawless place full of bad men. This is definitely something which Django Unchained plays up. While at times beautifully shot and filled with gorgeous scenery, this is ultimately a brutal tale of revenge and Tarantino as is his wont doesn't shield us from this violence.

Much has been made of both the level of violence and its supposed effect on society and indeed that somehow the film belittles the horrors of slavery through its copious use of the N word. I fail to see how it does anything other than shove the sheer terror that was slavery in the antebellum south into our faces and says look this is how it was. It is brutal and feels terribly real all the same.

The western and Tarantino are a perfect match because his usual excesses feel at home here and they never grate as they might in a different genre. This is above all an enjoyable film and it wears its running time well without overstaying its welcome. A definite must see.