Flick of The Day: Mary and Max

From strange beginnings can great things grow. At first glance a claymation adaptation of the true life pen pal relationship between an obese middle aged New Yorker and a lonely young girl from the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia would not seem like a promising idea for a film. However, in the hands of Australian animator Adam Elliott it becomes a truly ground breaking piece of cinema. Today's flick of the day is Mary & Max.

Mary & Max

In 1976, a young girl named Mary, voiced by Toni Collette struggles with loneliness due to her alcoholic mother and emotionally absent father. One day on a trip to the post office, she picks a name from the New York phone directory and decides to write to them. Her letter reaches Max Horowitz voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman, a 44 year old Jewish man who struggles with obesity and Asperger's syndrome. Amazingly, these two misanthropes who live on the margins of their own society find in each other a friend with which to converse and share their doubts, worries and neuroses and love of chocolate over the course of 20 years. Where they initially appear as oddballs and outsiders, we gradually see that both are perceptive and aware of the world around them and perhaps more importantly far nicer human beings than those supposedly normal folk.

A work of incredible depth and emotional maturity, it transcends its genre to tell a tale that everyone should know. It is not a happy story and not for children but it is a worthy one all the same. Rarely have issues such as mental illness, loneliness and isolation been dealt with in such a mature manner in a piece of cinema. It's a dark and beautiful picture and one will surely be left with a lot to think over for having seen it.

While the animation is the star of the show, the voice work is excellent throughout. Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman are unrecognisable in their voice characters and perhaps that is as it should be. While the film shows a bleak view of the world, it is this bleakness which gives it such an emotional punch and it is perhaps closer to the reality of many lives than we dare to admit. The relationship between the two allows Mary to open up to the world, indeed the animation noticeably brightens as her own confidence improves while Max finds that which he has sought all his life, a friend.

Overall then this is a triumph of a film with a deep message about what friendship means. As the film notes at its close "God gave us relatives, thank God we can choose our friends".

Flick of The Day: The Ides of March

The political thriller is very much a phenomenon of the 1970's when films like All The Presidents Men, The Parallax View and The Candidate took advantage of the cinema going public's cynicism and lack of public trust in the wake of the Watergate scandal. For the first time, people began to question the character of their political figures with a degree of circumspection. This kind of introspective and downhearted view of America gradually disappeared during the Reagan era, when the enemy was no longer within but in the left wing ideology of films like Salvador and a former flick of the day, The Killing Fields. Today's flick of the day, The Ides of March, then is very much a throwback to a different era from its stark opening credits to its dark hearted ending, and all the better for it.

The Ides of March

George Clooney makes a welcome return to form as a director after 2008's misbegotten Leatherheads with this extremely well acted old school thriller. The cast is stellar, Clooney himself is the idealized Democratic Presidential candidate Mike Morris on the cusp of victory in the primaries. His campaign is guided by the hard bitten campaigner Paul, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and the idealistic Stephen Myers, played by current Hollywood golden boy Ryan Gosling, most recently seen in Drive. Together they are engaged in a bitter war with the opposing strategist played by the ever reliable Paul Giamatti. A great ensemble cast but this is very much Gosling's movie. He holds the screen in a manner that at once confirms him as an actor of note, if his previous performances in Blue Valentine and Lars and The Real Girl were not enough.  Stephen is approached by Giamatti to switch sides in the final days of campaigning for the Ohio primary and neglects to tell his boss Paul about it. He soon finds himself on the outside looking in but not before discovering a dark secret involving a staffer played by Evan Rachel Wood with tragic consequences that could derail Mike Morris's campaign.

Adapted from a play called Farragut North by Beau Willimon, this film's theatrical origins are evident from early on with some long dialogue heavy scenes. This is no bad thing though for it allows the actors to really put some meat on the bones of their characters, something so often missing from modern thrillers. Gosling gives a very powerful performance as an idealistic young man, a true believer who sees his innocence completely dispelled. The best scenes are the one on ones between Gosling and each of the other leads. A tension filled scene in a Hotel room between Gosling and Hoffman, a look behind the curtain of idealism between Giamatti and Gosling and finally a dark late night game of verbal chicken between Clooney and Gosling. Each scene gives the sense that Clooney deliberately built the film around his actors, giving them the opportunity to show off their considerable talents. 

Ultimately though this is a drama, and a downbeat one at that. By the end, everyone including the audience is stripped of their innocence and the films ends quietly and ambiguously. Indeed, at the screening I attended nobody moved as the credits began to roll which I have always taken as a sign of a film hitting its dramatic targets. 

Tom Duffy: Get out, now. Or otherwise... 

Stephen Meyers: Otherwise, I'll end up like you? 

Tom Duffy: Yeah, you end up being a jaded, cynical asshole, just like me.

It could be argued the film is deeply cynical about the American election system though my personal view is that it is if anything more realistic than one would care to imagine. A fine drama, backed up by a superb male cast who make the best of their roles and Clooney deserves credit for having the gumption to cast himself as the slickly packaged candidate, a role so perfect for him that  you could easily see it ruined by casting somebody else. A fine film and well worth your time.

Flick of The Day: 25th Hour

Spike Lee exploded into the world of film in the 1980s with a fine début  in She's Gotta Have It, a comedy drama with an urban reality. However it was his third film, the incendiary Do The Right Thing, dealing as it did with race relations in New York's inner city, that really put Lee on the map as one of the finest, if controversial, film-makers of his generation. As time has passed, he has mellowed but his film-making only gets better, such as today's film, 25th Hour.

25th Hour

Monty Brogan, an excellent as usual Edward Norton, is a drug dealer with 24 hours to put his affairs in order before he heads off to prison for a 7 year stretch. He walks his beloved dog, Doyle, he says goodbye to his father, the superb Brian Cox and he goes out for one last night-out with his oldest friends. Jacob, a teacher played by Philip Seymour Hoffman who is in love with one of his teenage students shuffles through the movie, introverted, shy, but loyal to the end. Slaughtery played by Barry Pepper, a Wall St guy, cynical and arrogant but Monty's oldest friend.

Monty is saying goodbye to his life, his city and as the film moves on goes from grief to anger to acceptance. As the film opens, he is sitting on a bench by the river, thinking of how he got there, tinged with regret. An important aspect of this movie is that it was filmed shortly after 9/11 and Spike Lee devotes a number of important moments to the scars that are left on the City, his City, Monty's City, from the terrorist attack. At one point, we look into the crater left at ground zero. As Monty revisits his old haunts, he looks at the shrines to the dead fire-fighters in his Father's bar. 9/11 is ever present throughout the film.
Monty's anger is obvious, eventually exploding into a vicious rant at the whole city in a public toilet. Everyone is at fault in his eyes, you can feel the characters aimless anger:

"Fuck you and this whole city and everyone in it. Fuck the panhandler's grubbing for money, smiling at me behind my back. Fuck the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car. Get a fucking job.  Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores, stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. Slow the fuck down!
Fuck the Chelsea Boys with their waxed chests and pumped-up biceps, going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jiggling their dicks on my Channel!
Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speakee English. Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafes, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth, wheelin' and dealin' and schemin'. Go back where you fucking came from. Fuck the black-hatted Hasidim strolling up and down the Street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff, selling South African apartheid diamonds. Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas-Gordon Gekko wannabe motherfuckers figuring out new ways to rob hardworking people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for fucking life. You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that shit? Give me a fucking break. Fuck the Puerto Ricans. Twenty to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls. Worst fucking parade in the city. And don't even get me started on the Dominicans,'cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good. Fuck the Bensonhurst ltalians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giambi Louisville Slugger baseball bats trying to audition for "The Sopranos." Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermes scarves and their Balducci artichoke. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched all taut
and shiny. You're not fooling anybody, sweetheart. Fuck the Uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take five steps on every layup to the hoop, and then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended 137 years ago. Move the fuck on. Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus-violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust! Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child's pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil.  And while you're at it, fuck J.C. He got off easy -- a day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity. Try seven years in fucking Otisville, J. Fuck Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and backward-ass cave-dwelling fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your 16 whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel-headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal lrish ass."

Eventually, Monty comes to see that he has nobody but himself to blame but not before each of his friends, and his father blame themselves for not being there to save him from himself. In the end, all that's left is fear. Fear of what awaits him in Prison. Monty goes to his fate and in that is a kind of redemption. He sees the errors he has made and we can have hope for him as he goes off to prison, because of that epiphany.

A very fine film, played out by actors at the top of their game. This is one of the best films of the last 10 years and worthy of your time.

Flick of The Day: Almost Famous

At first glance, it would seem the 1970s are best left were they are. Far too many people are willing to gaze back with fondness upon that decades music, fashion, and cinema while overlooking the fact that for every Led Zeppelin there was a Gary Glitter, for every Godfather a Love Story. However such is life, and given this rose tinted view it is perhaps surprising that there have been few attempts by Hollywood to document that decades pop culture and social conventions. Ang Lee's The Ice Storm and Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused being two notable exceptions until Cameron Crowe's semi autobiographical Almost Famous.

Almost Famous [Extended Edition] [Blu-ray] [2000]

Before becoming a director and screenwriter of some note, Cameron Crowe spent much of his youth as a contributor to Rolling Stone magazine, going on the road aged 15 documenting some of the great bands of the era like Led Zeppelin and The Eagles. It was this experience which drives Almost Famous telling as it does the tale of 15 year old William Miller played with boyish charm by Patrick Fugit, and a Summer spent touring with the fictitious Stillwater as they wind their way across the United States from California to New York. 

This film is packed with a very fine cast including some particularly fine performances from the likes of Philip Seymour Hoffman as real life rock journalist Lester Bangs and Kate Hudson as Penny Lane, the so-called Band Aid whom William falls in love with over the course of the Summer. Any film such as this will of course live and die depending on the believability of the band and this is where Crowe's experience shines through. There is the preening lead singer played with abandon by Jason Lee and the mysterious guitarist, a career best performance from Billy Crudup. There is also the odd drummer and the other guy bass player. All clichés you immediately recognise and relate to. The songs played by Stillwater also ring true, composed as they are by Nancy Wilson of Heart fame.

This is a film you really have to see if you have any interest in the music of the era but it also stands on its own as a tale of growing up. William goes from being the high school outsider to as his sister says at the start of the film, "One day, you'll be cool". It captures the era, the people and the music almost perfectly. Get on the tour bus!