Venice Review Round-Up: "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"

Ever since its brilliant first trailer, Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, an adaptation of John Le Carre's spy novel, has been at the top of my most anticipated list for the rest of the year. In addition to Alfredson himself, whose last film was the excellent Let the Right One In (2008), the film boasts an incredible ensemble led by Gary Oldman. The vibe given off by the promotional materials is filled with a quiet sense of dread, menace, and paranoia, which fits perfectly with the story's Cold War setting. So, needless to say, I was both excited and nervous about the film's world premiere at Venice. Thankfully, Alfredson's film, his first English-language feature, is getting off to an excellent start, one that positions the film as one of the top contenders for The Golden Lion:

The London Evening Standard - Derek Malcolm (4/5 stars): "...an effective celebration of Le Carre's artful story-telling, acted by one and all with with a quiet panache that strikes home."

The Telegraph - David Gritten (5/5 stars): "[Alfredson] captures scenes with silky fluidity...finding a visual equivalent to the story's hunt for complex solutions." "...it makes your heart pound, gets your pulses racing, and sends your brain cells into overdrive."

Variety - Leslie Felperin (N/A): "An inventive, meaty distillation of Le Carre's 1974 novel...an incisive examination of Cold War ethics, rich in both contempo resonance and elegiac melancholy."

Thompson on Hollywood - Matt Mueller (N/A): "...contains a clutch of nail-biting sequences and features a razor-sharp turn from Gary Oldman..." "...settles for being a very good as opposed to a superb spy thriller."

The Guardian - Xan Brooks (4/5 stars): "Oldman gives a deliciously delicate, shaded performance..." "If there is any flaw to the film, it is that the whistle is blown too soon..." "...[the film] is more about the journey than the destination; more fascinated with detail than the denouement."

Time Out London - Dave Calhoun (4/5 stars): "...Alfredson ('Let the Right One In') blows a fresh air of continental style into Le Carre's story without harming the 1970s British period feel of his source material." "The new script...is a marvel of wise and respectful adaptation."

The Hollywood Reporter - Deborah Young (N/A): "...so visually absorbing, felicitous shot after shot, that its emotional coldness is noticed only at the end..."

IndieWire - Oliver Lyttelton (A): "...incredibly rich and perfectly constructed..."

Venice Verdict: A slick, well-acted, and intellectually stimulating Cold War thriller, as well as a successful adaptation of Le Carre's labyrinthine novel.

Venice Review Round-Up: "Shame"

I have a confession to make: I'm really not a fan of Irish director Steve McQueen's acclaimed debut Hunger. Though parts of it are extremely well-made and compelling, the lopsided nature of the narrative, which centers on IRA member Bobby Sands' famous hunger strike, bothered me in ways that I wasn't expecting. Even so, and perhaps this is a weakness of mine, when I consider the amount of acclaim Hunger received, I feel inclined to give McQueen another chance with his second feature, Shame. Early word, as you'll see below, is getting off to a fantastic start, so maybe this time around I can actually get on board the McQueen bandwagon.

Variety - Justin Chang (N/A): "...more approachable but equally uncompromising drama..." "Even when he says nothing, which is most of the time, Fassbender transfixes."

The Guardian - Xan Brooks (4/5 stars): "Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan give dynamite performances..." "This is fluid, rigorous, serious cinema; the best kind of adult movie."

IndieWire - Oliver Lyttelton (A-): "...McQueen, like almost no other filmmaker, is confident enough to frame up and let the actors work, and it's the source of the film's most memorable moments..."

InContention - Guy Lodge (3.5/4 stars): "...[McQueen] has a consistently rewarding understanding of the narrative powers of composition..."

Time Out London - Dave Calhoun (4/5 stars): "...McQueen has immersed himself in a wholly different world and made a film that is similarly distinctive and exploratory and grasps you from beginning to end."

The Hollywood Reporter - Todd McCarthy (N/A): "Driven by a brilliant, ferocious performance by Michael Fassbender, Shame is a real walk on the wild side..." "...may ultimately prove too psychologically pat in confronting its subject's problem, but its dramatic and stylistic prowess provides a cinematic jolt that is bracing to experience."

Venice Verdict: A powerful follow-up to Hunger, Shame shows director Steve McQueen embracing somewhat familiar territory with a bold, striking vision, with strong performances from Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan.

Venice Review Round-Up: "Contagion"

Hollywood loves a good disaster movie. And, thankfully for studios, they come in many variations. Earthquakes, tidal waves, burning skyscrapers, monsters, or simply the end of the world itself. And, when it comes to movies about diseases, Hollywood isn't usually known for being anymore realistic. Whether it's The Crazies or British imports like 28 Days Later (which is, to be fair, excellent), if it starts with a disease, it means one thing: zombies. So, leave it up to Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Ocean's 11) to try something different with the sub-genre. For a while now, there's been buzz that Soderbergh's Contagion was unnervingly graphic and realistic in its treatment of a disease, and early word at Venice, in addition to praising the film, is only reinforcing those early notions.

The Telegraph - David Gritten (N/A): "...a cut above most Hollywood thrillers..." (most of the review was spent on vague plot details, so a big 'booooo' to Mr. Gritten.

The Hollywood Reporter - Todd McCarthy (N/A): "Director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns create unease and simmering tension without going over the top into souped-up suspense or gross-out moments..."

The Guardian - Jason Solomons (3/5 stars): "I was shuffling nervously in my seat, edging away from the sniffling man next to me." "...well assembled and propulsive, though like the virus, it loses momentum."

IndieWire - Oliver Lyttelton (A-): "Soderbergh creates a kind of tapestry of illness and panic, and the structure works like a charm..."

Variety - Peter DeBruge (N/A): "Still, without fully rounded characters, it's hard to care who lives or dies..."

Time Out London - Dave Calhoun (3/5 stars): "It's a sober and engrossing dramatic thriller..."

Venice Verdict: Though it may not be entirely personable, Contagion is a major success for Steven Soderberg, and an unusually realistic and unsettling ensemble thriller.

Venice Review Round-Up: "A Dangerous Method"

Another day, another major player making its debut in Venice. The next big one, and a big Oscar hopeful, is David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method, which centers on the relationship between Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). It's been buzzed about for quite some time, with many thinking/hoping that the film could prove to be Cronenberg's big break into the Oscars. Like many high-profile premieres, however, Method isn't making quite the splash that fans of the director and his cast (which includes Keira Knightley) had predicted.

The Telegraph - David Gritten (3/5 stars): "Much of this material...is frankly uncinematic, and Cronenberg has compensated with sumptuous locations..." "But it's Knightley that one remembers, for a full-on portrayal that is gusty and potentially divisive in equal parts."

The Guardian - Xan Brooks (2/5 stars): "What the spanking [scene] can't do, unfortunately, is knock some life into this heartfelt, well-acted but curiously underwhelming slab of Masterpiece Theatre."

IndieWire - Oliver Lyttelton (B): "Still, if the take off and landing are a bit bumpy, most of A Dangerous Method is fearsomely smart..." "But if anything keeps it from quite hitting the heights that it could, it's Hampton's script."

London Evening Standard - Derek Malcolm (4/5 stars): "...[Knightley] more than holds her own from the moment she arrives on the scene..." "It is a dark, troubling tale...with a calm appreciation of the passions that lay behind the trio's different views of treatment..."

The Hollywood Reporter - Todd McCarthy (N/A): "Precise, lucid, and thrillingly disciplined...brought to vivid life by the outstanding lead performances of Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, and Michael Fassbender."

Variety - Justin Chang (N/A): "...the film's most problematic element is Knightley, whose brave but unskilled depiction of hysteria at times leaves itself open to laughs."

Venice Verdict: It has a cool head, a compelling story, and features a trio of solid performances, but A Dangerous Method may be too cold and distant to consistently connect with audiences.

Venice Review Round-Up: "Carnage"

Though it is among my most anticipated for the rest of year, I'm still on the fence about Roman Polanski's Carnage. Adapted from Yasmina Reza's Tony-winning play, the director's latest features an excellent cast (Waltz, Foster, Winslet, Reilly) in a situation that seems rife with possibility for juicy drama and dark comedy. The only problem is that all released info and footage so far has done little to calm my fears about one key aspect: the source material. As I'll probably end up saying every time I discuss Carnage, I was no fan of the stage show, which felt like it thought it was smarter, funnier, and more insightful than it actually was. I was counting on Polanski and his excellent cast to find something in the material that would make it work better. Judging from the first few reviews, I'm still stuck on the damn fence:

InContention - Guy Lodge (2.5/4 stars): "...the film....doesn't give [the subject matter] much resonance beyond the universal fun factor of milquetoasts behaving badly." "Foster is given the play's most garlanded role, and enjoys herself most when the character at last self-immolates." "The men, perhaps surprisingly, fare better."

The Guardian - Xan Brooks (4/5 stars): "...a pitch black farce of unbearable tension." "[Polanski's] direction is precise, unfussy, and utterly fit for purpose..." "It does turn a shade too shrill...in the final stretch..."

IndieWire - Oliver Lyttelton (C+): "...it's pleasurable enough, although anyone hoping for a return to 1970s form for Polanski will be disappointed..." "For this writer, it's Jodie Foster who was the highlight." "...at best Reza's material is targeting some fairly low-hanging fruit (upper-middle class hypocrisy, in the main) without adding much to the discussion..."

The Hollywood Reporter - Todd McCarthy (N/A): "Snappy, nasty, deftly acted...Carnage fully delivers the laughs and savagery of the stage piece..." "Polanski too often abandons group compositions in favor of close-ups..."

Variety - Justin Chang (N/A): "...never shakes off a mannered, hermetic feel that consistently betrays [the film's] theatrical origins."


Venice Verdict: Though it has moments that work, Polanski's adaptation of Yasmina Reza's play is a minor, and flawed, pleasure. Jodie Foster and Christoph Waltz emerge on top, even though the film around them fails to say much that hasn't been said before.

Venice Review Round-Up: "The Ides of March"

It's the end of August, and along with the end of Summer, it means that it's time for the Venice Film Festival, one of the biggest and buzziest in the world. There are any number of potential contenders screening this year (in and out of competition), and the 68th festival, with a jury headed by Darren Aronofsky, kicked things off with its opening night selection, George Clooney's The Ides of March. Here's a look at some early word on the political thriller, which boasts a fantastic cast and is one of my most anticipated of the year (click the publication name to go to the full review):

Variety - Justin Chang (N/A): "...wallows in its own superiority to the point where its cynical pose almost looks naive." "...the terrific cast isn't always seen to its best advantage."

Emmanuel Levy (A-): "In time, this 1970s-like movie should assume an honorable place in the company of such great American political melodramas as 'The Candidate,' 'All the President's Men,' and others..."

Time Out London - Dave Calhoun (3/5 stars): "...taken as a diverting aside on our world and with its more awkward pretensions forgiven, it's captivating enough and well-performed by a strong cast, even down to the smaller ensemble roles."

The Hollywood Reporter - Deborah Young (N/A): "...the fine cast makes every line of dialogue count..." "Classy and professional throughout, the technical work gracefully holds all the threads together."

The Guardian - Xan Brooks (3/5 stars): "What remains is your classic compromise candidate: a film that set out with a crusading zeal but had its rough edges planed down en route to the nomination."

Venice Verdict: Though a well made and well acted political thriller, The Ides of March is not quite as insightful and sharp as it aspires to be.

2010 Venice Film Festival Winners! [updated as announced]

• Golden Osella for Best Cinematography: Silent Souls
• Best Actress: Ariane Labed - Attenberg
• Best Actor: Vincent Gallo - Essential Killing
• Golden Osella for Best Screenplay: Alex De La Iglesia - Balada Triste de Trompeta
• Marcello Mastroianni Award: Mila Kunis - Black Swan
• Leoncino D'Oro Award: Barney's Version
• Special Jury Prize: Jerzy Skolimowski - Essential Killing
• Silver Lion: Alex De La Iglesia - Balada Triste de Trompeta
• Special Golden Lion for the director's overall work: Monte Hellman - Road to Nowhere
• Golden Lion (unanimously): Sofia Coppola - Somewhere

Venice Review Round-Up: "Somewhere"

Day 3 in Venice brings the latest from another heavy hitting writer/director: Sofia Coppola. Since Somewhere was announced, people have been waiting to see if it falls more in line with Lost in Translation or Marie Antoinette, not just in themes, but in actual quality. The film has also been buzzed about because of its casting; not only does Elle Fanning (younger sister of Dakota) have a lead role, but her co-star is Stephen Dorff, who could be in for a Mickey-Rourke-esque comeback if Somewhere takes off. Based on the (still early) word coming out of the festival, it's more in the vein of the Lost in Translation, and even for someone like me, who wasn't crazy about that film, that's definitely a good thing:

The film gets off to a good start from The London Evening Standard's Derek Malcolm, who writes, "The film has no big dramatic moments, just a series of sequences gradually making the watcher aware of just why there's a text on Johnny's phone stating: Why are you such a ****?" He goes on to say that "Dorff and Fanning play naturally well," and that, "[the film] may last a little more in the memory than Marie Antoinette, if not quite as long as Lost in Translation." Over at Incontention, Guy Lodge gives the film ***1/2 out of **** and claims "both actors are a delight...this [is] Dorff's finest hour" and Elle Fanning "is a quietly rewarding screen presence, perceptive rather than precocious."

David Jenkins of Time Out London, however, isn't quite so enthusiastic. Despite awarding the film ***/*****, his review gets off to a rather nasty start: "A cloying sense of deja vu radiates from Somewhere, Sofia Coppola's long-gestating follow-up to her divisive postmodern historical biopic Marie Antoinette." However, Jenkins also writes that "The relationship between Johnny and Cleo is beautifully modulated, satisfyingly free of the torrent of sentimental heart-to-hearts that a lesser film would have bludgeoned us with." He praises both performances, but is more enthusiastic about Fanning, who he calls "a revelation." However, Jenkins concludes his review by saying that Coppola perhaps too frequently borrows from Lost in Translation.

Additional Review(s):

Variety: "...A quiet heartbreaker"/"[Coppola] further hones her gifts for ruefully funny observation and understated melancholy..."

Empire: "...some audiences may struggle with finding sympathy with for Johnny and his zombified state of spoiled-brat ennui. But if you roll with it, Somewhere is a rich and sophisticated film that draws its world so deftly it's easy to forget it isn't ours."

Thompson on Hollywood/Indie Wire: "Witty, spare, and gorgeously framed, Somewhere should play well for the young smart-house set."

Venice Verdict: Though it will strike some as a retread of Coppola's earlier work, Somewhere is a quiet, un-eventful, yet compelling look at relationships.

Venice Review Round-Up: "Miral"

Day 2 of Venice brings the first reviews of Julian Schnabel's (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Israel/Palestine orphanage/liberation movement drama Miral. Schnabel's previous film was a big hit with critics and landed a number of major Oscar nominations (including Best Director). Unfortunately, if the first batch of reviews are any indication, his next Oscar hopeful (which the Weinsteins have reportedly made their #1 Oscar priority) isn't getting off to the best start:

Incontention's Guy Lodge specifically takes Schnabel's direction to task, and writes that he "awkwardly welds his pet visual and sonic tics onto a narrative that struggles to support them," and that "his approach feels both shoe-horned and fairly disingenuous in this context." Lodge also refrains from giving praise or criticism to the performances, though he suggests that Hiam Abbass is wasted in an old lady wig. ThompsonOnHollywood's Anne Thompson is slightly more positive, and writes, "while Miral packs an emotional punch, [Schnabel] tells the wrong story," and goes on to say that the film's bookend sections which focus on "the great Hiam Abbass" had her in tears.

Unfortunately, she's less kind to the sections that focus on Freida Pinto's titular Miral. Thompson writes, "[Miral's] story remains expositional and flat," and says that Pinto is "not an expressive actress." Derek Malcom of The London Evening Standard awards the film 3 out of 5 stars, and amidst a review that is mostly description/plot summary (boooo) says that the cast play their roles "with an emotional skill that points up the story convincingly."

Additional Reviews:

Variety: "Schnabel's style feels misapplied..."

The Hollywood Reporter: "Although too schematic and unfocused to garner much critical support, it has the kind of direct simplicity that could reach out to historically challenged audiences and politically minded festival juries."

The Independent (UK): "Miral is plodding at times, choppily edited and unevenly performed"/"At its most leaden, this is more like a school lecture on in Middle East history than it is a piece of drama." (***/*****)

Empire: "...simply dreadful...It's a film so obsessed with being about Big Important Stuff that it forgets all the important little stuff - er, like characters and good writing - and, as a result, it's a chore to sit through."

Venice Verdict: Schnabel misfires with a film that mishandles its subject matter, characters, and story, with performances that are hit and miss.

Venice Review Round-Up: "Black Swan"

Now that it's festival season again, it's time to bring back the review round-ups, where we take a look at what the critics have to say about the latest anticipated films. The 67th Venice Film Festival kicked off with Darren Aronofsky's highly anticipated ballet thriller Black Swan, and now it's time to see what everyone thought. Check back though, as this post will be updated throughout the day in the event that a flood of reviews pour out that contradict my initial "critics consensus":

The film gets off to a good start from Variety's Peter Debruge, who calls the film, "A wicked, sexy, and ultimately devastating study of a young dancer's all-consuming ambition," and goes on to say that star Natalie Portman gives a "courageous turn [that] lays bare the myriad insecurities genuinely dedicated performers face when testing their limits." He finishes the review by comparing the psychological disintegration elements of the story to Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion, which is pretty high praise. The Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt has a different take. He says that the film is "an instant guilty pleasure, a gorgeously shot, visually complex film whose badness is what's so good about it." He goes on to say that "Aronofsky...never succeeds in wedding genre elements to the world of ballet" and that "the horror-movie nonsense drags everything down the rabbit hole of preposterousness."

Natalie is unhappy with Mr. Honeycutt's review; watch out...

Yet the film receives another rave from Screen Daily's Mike Goodridge, who proclaims "Darren Aronofsky soars to new heights with Black Swan, an enthralling drama set in the competitive world of ballet." On a review of a much smaller scale - a tweet - Incontention's Guy Lodge gives the film an "A-" and manages to say the following in 140 characters: "How to tweet this? Aronofsky extends The Wrestler's fascination with physically broken performers to the phsychological. Results are florid and fine cut; dances thrillingly on the border of trash before a sharp left turn into modern fairy tale. Having said that, I can imagine a lot of people disagreeing." Finally, Chris Henson of The Examiner says that "Natalie Portman is devastating."

Additional Reviews:

The Telegraph: "Powerful, gripping, and always intriguing, it also features a lead performance from Natalie Portman that elevates her from substantial leading actress to major star likely to be lifting awards in the near future." ****/****

Indie Wire: "With Natalie Portman, in the demanding leading role, equaling her director in unquestioned commitment the central issue for the viewer is how far one is willing to follow the film down the road to oblivion for art's sake"/"Particularly grating is Hershey's insufferable mother character."

Venice Verdict: A striking, well-acted, mesmerizing work about dedication and obsession whose madness and genre-elements may be too much for some.

Tomorrow: Venice turns 67 with help from Natalie and Darren

Tomorrow marks the kick off of the star-studded Venice Film Festival, the most prestigious festival behind Cannes. But unlike Cannes, Venice (and even more so, Toronto) can actually be a good launching point for Oscar hopefuls. A number of major contenders will be premiering in and out of competition, including Julie Taymor's The Tempest and Darren Aronofsky's festival opener Black Swan. 'Swan,' is one that I'm particularly excited for, especially after the incredible first trailer that premiered roughly two weeks ago. This is Aronofsky's record at Venice is 1-1. 2006's The Fountain received many mixed and negative reviews and was even booed by portions of the audience, while 2008's The Wrestler was widely praised and won the top prize, the Golden Lion. By tomorrow afternoon, given the time difference, we'll finally have an answer as to whether Aronofsky racks up another win or loss.

Bad timing...

So apparently the past two and a half weeks were simply overloaded with cinema related goodness, all of which I had to wait until now to figure out about (I'm sure there's still some significant new casting news/trailer/etc... I haven't seen yet), because trying to translate those articles in German was giving me a headache. Since there's too much to cover in individual posts since it would be old news anyway), I'll just throw in a few quick thoughts about the most eye-catching things that appeared while I was in Germany:

The Miral trailer: A bit uneven (it should be shorter), but very interesting, though I'm going to have a hard time adjusting to see Hiam Abbass in that haircut. Schnabel's background as a painter is still evident in the color scheme (the shades of blue are beautiful), albeit in a more subdued way than in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and it will be interesting to see how he handles this more-or-less two-part story (the first half of which would be oriented around Abbass, the second around Freida Pinto's titular character). The film will also offer a chance to see if the stunning Pinto can really act, or if she should stick to modeling.

The complete line-up for the Venice Film Festival: Black Swan and Machete are confirmed for a double-bill opening (appropriate considering Machete's origins in the Tarantino/Rodriguez collaboration Grindhouse), and Julie Taymor's The Tempest will finally see the light of day as the closing screening. Not making it to the festival? Tree of Life (oh, come ON already), and Rabbit Hole, which will thankfully make it into Toronto. I'd hope there aren't behind-the-scenes troubles; Abel Korzeniowski has been replaced as the film's score composer, which I'm assuming means whatever he came up with didn't fit with Mitchell's vision. Let's just hope the delay doesn't have to do with overall quality, though. A certain tall, Australian actress could really use a widely-acclaimed film on her resume right about now...

The trailer for Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch: is friggin' insane. Snyder's current film, the gorgeous-looking The Legend of the Guardians, hasn't even hit theaters yet, but that hasn't stopped the flashy director of 300 from working on another project. The action looks, well, extreme, which could either be really cool or headache-inducing. However, I love the idea of Abbie Cornish as an ass-kicking (supporting) heroine. She should have plenty of built-up rage after that Bright Star Best Actress snub.

The first round of confirmed films at the Toronto Film Festival: In addition to lots of big names (including big Cannes titles like Biutiful), this year's TIFF will also launch Guillaume Canet's Little White Lies starring Marion Cotillard along with Robert Redford's Lincoln assassination (sort of) flick The Conspirator and John Madden's The Debt. Festival circuit ubiquity Blue Valentine will also appear, along with a slew of foreign films, with a handful of more commercial titles, like Emma Stone vehicle Easy A.

The trailer for The Town: Ben Affleck's second directorial effort after the excellent Gone Baby Gone (2007) is set in the heart of Boston's criminal district, and though it seems plenty gritty, this first glimpse at the film does showcase a more "commercial" looking film, with gunshots, car chases, and exploding cars. The real hook here for me, however, is the cast, led by Jon Hamm, Affleck, and burgeoning talents Jeremy Renner and Rebecca Hall, both of whom are starting to appear more regularly in more prominent film roles (if you can see Please Give in theaters, do so, if only for the lovely work from Hall and her co-stars), which is a very good thing.

Everything I missed: Here I don't mean news, I mean the reason for this blog in the first place: movies. I'm nearly three weeks late to the Inception debate, and I need to run out and see Cyrus and The Kids Are All Right and hope that they don't randomly vanish from the art house/indie theaters in Houston soon (reassuringly, Cyrus was given a slot at at the mainstream theater near my house, which is a good sign). The much delayed and painfully released Agora is also near(ish) me, and only in one theater, so I'll need to catch that one soon as well. I'm also behind on TV, and have missed at least two episodes of True Blood, Entourage, and of all things, the impressively reviewed start to Mad Men's fourth season (and apparently Dexter season 5 has a trailer out somewhere...GAH).

Lastly: The first images from Aronofsky's ballet mystery Black Swan emerged. You can see the rest of them here (love that full-body shot of Portman in costume), but the image that caught my eye was the one below. Frankly, I hope Mr. Rachel Weisz f-ing loses his mind with this project, involving a ballerina and her (imaginary?) rival.

*sigh* Another "Tree of Life" delay

Mr. Malick does like to take his time, doesn't he? At this point I think I'd be grateful if we saw this film by the end of 2015. I was really hoping to finally hear some official reviews of the film (y'know, something other than quotes of "OMG AMAZING" from people who worked on it) from Venice and/or Toronto. You can read the article HERE.

Another "The Road" review from Venice

Glad to see another positive one, and I love the comparison of Mortensen's look to an El Greco painting. Nice to see some more good words about the chemistry between the two leads as well, since that relationship is crucial to the film's success.

Source: Screendaily.com

As heartbreaking on screen as it was on Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer-prize winning pages, The Road is an almost unbearably sad film, beautifully arranged and powerfully acted – a tribute to the array of talents involved. There is so much in this picture, from dread, horror, to suspense, bitterly moving love, extraordinary, Oscar-worthy art direction and a desperate lead performance from Viggo Mortensen which perfectly illustrates the wrenching desperation of parental love. But its hopelessness will make The Road hard going for general audiences: critical and awards support are vital to its commercial success or failure and even still The Road will be a challenge.

Artistically, however, this film is a success, and anyone who sees it is unlikely to ever forget John Hillcoat’s (The Proposition) interpretation of McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic planet where “each day is greyer than the one before”. Production designer Chris Kennedy, using mainly Pennsylvania but also post-Katrina locations in Louisiana, presents a world which is slowly dying - Nick Cave’s sparse soundtrack punctuated by the crashes of trees falling to the ground, dead.

We don’t know the exact nature of the Apocalypse, just that The Man (Mortensen) and his wife (Theron) survived, and that she was pregnant. Perhaps the biggest departure from the book is in The Woman’s character; fleshed out here, but still with limited screen time, she doesn’t want to bring The Boy into this bleak world – later on, she is angry that they only have two bullets left in their gun. “They will rape me … and they will rape him. … They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you won’t face it. You’d rather wait for it to happen,” she tells The Man.

Rape and cannibalism are just two of the horrors of The Road, and some ten years the Man and the Boy are travelling it alone, going south to the sea. There is nothing on it – ruined landscapes, bodies of people who have killed themselves or been killed, danger, dirt, gray dust. There’s a terrifying sequence in a house with evil secrets under the floor; later on, another underground cavern yields up delights, but fear is always there.

Early on, the Man and Boy are shown encountering bandits travelling on a tank; initially, it conjures up memories of Mad Max but The Road dispenses with the cartoonishness of the former when one of the men looks at the boy and the horror they face daily becomes clear.

The Man has brought The Boy into the world, but it’s a terrible world with no hope and no future, only the evil that lies within men laid bare as the world dies. The Boy represents hope, but what hope is there? Of survival? Alone? The Road speaks to parents of their most unspeakable fears.

As The Boy, young Smit-McPhee looks uncannily like Charlize Theron which helps with initial establishing sequences. He is convincing in what must have been a tough, hard shoot for an 11-year-old – there’s a lot of rain in this film, and a lot of terror to convey. A bleak Viggo Mortensen, his face etched like an El Greco painting, urgently and convincingly conveys his character’s love and desperation, the actor’s physicality heightening the sense of reality – a sense that becomes overwhelming by the hopeless third act, despite the attempted relief of the final moments.

Variety on "The Road": "It goes nowhere"

So, is this review an indicator of more to come, part of a minority, or a sign that the film is going to be extremely divisive? What's most interesting about this one are the negative comments directed at Mortensen, who has received praise from The Independent UK and Emmanuel Levy.

Source: Variety

This "Road" leads nowhere. If you're going to adapt a book like Cormac McCarthy's 2006 bestseller, you're pretty much obliged to make a terrific film or it's not worth doing -- first because expectations are high, and second, because the picture needs to make it worth people's while to sit through something so grim. Except for the physical aspects of this bleak odyssey by a father and son through a post-apocalyptic landscape, this long-delayed production falls dispiritingly short on every front. Showing clear signs of being test-screened and futzed with to death, the Dimension release may receive a measure of respect in some quarters but is very, very far from the film it should have been, spelling moderate to tepid B.O. prospects after big fest preems.
Even more than "No Country for Old Men," with which the Coen brothers showed what is possible artistically and commercially with a McCarthy novel onscreen, "The Road" reads extremely cinematically. Filled almost entirely by spare but vivid physical descriptions of a decimated United States in its death throes after an unexplained catastrophe, and with limited dialogue, the book serves up images and tense situations that practically leap from the page as potential movie scenes.

Some things were obvious: The film's style needed to be as terse, exacting, stripped-down, tough and precise as McCarthy's prose style. The picture also should have been shocking, haunting and, at the end, deeply moving. As it is, director John Hillcoat ("The Proposition") and lenser Javier Aguirresarobe have come up with some arresting scorched-earth vistas captured on locations in Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Oregon, but have missed the bigger picture almost entirely.

It's a survival story in the most elemental possible way, as an unnamed man and boy, about 11, trudge daily through a dark world of barren forests with falling trees, torched towns and vandalized stores, empty roads and depleted fields, in search of food and shelter, all the while taking care to avoid roving gangs searching for defenseless humans to be turned into slaves or, more likely, dinner.

The man (Viggo Mortensen) has a revolver with two bullets in it, then only one. As far too many flashbacks of his pre-catastrophe life reveal, he's not a military or survivalist type, and he had a gorgeous wife (Charlize Theron) until she couldn't stand it anymore and took off. But his love for his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) has made him resourceful and resolute despite the utter lack of long-term prospects, and he continually responds to the youngster's despairing questions with answers that insist upon perseverance.

For reasons that remain unclear even after they arrive there, they are walking toward the sea, and dreadful sights abound along the way: skeletons, rotting bodies, naked prisoners locked in dark basements like animals to be butchered (the book's two most ghastly images have been dispensed with, however). Occasionally, they chance upon an abandoned house with a stock of canned food (Coca-Cola has no problem surviving the apocalypse), clean blankets and clothes.

The drama is one little genre step away from being an outright zombie movie, something that's much more evident onscreen, with its drooling, crusty-toothed aggressors and live humans with missing limbs; memories of "Night of the Living Dead" unavoidably advance in all the scenes in which the man and boy take refuge in a house, where they must contend with unfriendly marauders.

But Hillcoat, who played with heavy violence in "The Proposition" and made some of it stick, shows no talent for or inclination toward setting up a scene here; any number of sequences in "The Road" could have been very suspenseful if built up properly, but Hillcoat, working from a script by Joe Penhall, just hopscotches from scene to scene in almost random fashion without any sense of pacing or dramatic modulation.

Dialogue that should have been directed with an almost Pinteresque sense of timing is delivered without meaningful shadings, principally by two actors who have no chemistry together. Unfortunately, Mortensen lacks the gravitas to carry the picture; suddenly resembling Gabby Hayes with his whiskers and wayward hair, the actor has no bottom to him, and his interactions with Smit-McPhee, whom one can believe as Theron's son but not Mortensen's, never come alive. Tellingly, both thesps are better in their individual scenes with other actors; Mortensen gets into it with Robert Duvall, who plays an old coot met along the road, while Smit-McPhee registers a degree of rapport with Guy Pearce, practically unrecognizable at first as another wanderer. Generally, the boy's readings are blandly on the nose.

Scraps of narration by Mortensen seem like unnecessary afterthoughts, while the preponderance of scenes featuring the wife is explainable only because Theron's presence needed to be justified by more screen time. Score by longtime Hillcoat collaborator Nick Cave and Warren Ellis borders on the treacly, softening the tone and further conventionalizing a film that should have gone the other direction toward something harsh and daring.

A review of "The Road" from the Venice Film Festival...and it's good!!

Hopefully this isn't the only one of its kind. I've been waiting for this one for quite some time (it was supposed to come out last year). There were rumors of disastrous test screenings, although many have claimed that the film completed shooting too close to the release date and needed time for a non-rushed post production period. Obviously the fact that it was pushed back a year but still received an (early) awards season release means that the studio must have some amount of faith in the finished product, or at least Viggo Mortensen's performance, which could be a big contender in this year's Beset Actor race. Whether or not John Hillcoat can top the Coen brothers in terms of adapting and executing Cormac McCarthy's vision remains to be seen, but it's nice to finally have some reassurance that the film might actually be worth the wait.


Source: The Independent (UK)

First Night: The Road, Venice Film Festival

(Rated 4/ 5 )

Bleak but moving tale of the apocalypse

By Geoffrey MacNab

Thursday, 3 September 2009


The Road, the very long-gestating adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel, was originally due to be released almost a year ago. Its long delay led many to speculate that the film was in trouble. It was very hard to see how a novel as stark and pared-down as McCarthy's fable about a father and son roaming a post-apocalyptic landscape could be made the stuff of cinematic drama.

In the event, John Hillcoat has made a film of power and sensitivity that works remarkably well on the big screen. It plays like a Dystopian version of Huck Finn. "Tattered gods slouching in their rags across the waste," was how McCarthy described the father and son on their grim odyssey south across America toward the coast.

The film captures well the strange mix of heroism and seeming futility that characterises the journey. What is most impressive is the restraint the filmmakers bring to their material. The look of the film is muted and grey other than in the flashbacks to the pre-apocalyptic moments that the man (Viggo Mortensen) enjoyed with his wife (Charlize Theron) before the world ground to a halt.

The music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis is likewise understated. We don't hear Cave wailing out murder ballads. Instead, the score is used in ominous but understated fashion to accentuate the feeling of loss and foreboding that runs throughout the film.

The Road must have been a plum job for the production designers. They clearly relished helping create the barren landscapes, eerily empty cities and dust-covered houses that fill the film. In other hands, The Road might have played like a slightly artier version of the many post-apocalyptic zombie or horror movies that have been made in recent years. There are plenty of macabre elements here – skulls on sticks, blood-drenched ground, cannibalism, naked humans kept locked away in basements by grim-looking backwoodsmen.

However, Hillcoat eschews morbidity for its own sake. His focus is more on the relationship between the man and the boy. The father comes closer and closer to losing his moral compass and becoming like "the bad guys" It's his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who both gives him the reason for persevering with the journey and pulls him back from his own will to violence.

At points, the film is so earnest that it risks becoming inadvertently comic. Hairy, mud-encrusted men wandering across bleak landscapes eating precious tins of fruit can't help take on an absurd aspect. However, the craftsmanship here generally keeps the risk of self-parody at bay.

There is a moving cameo from (an unrecognisable) Robert Duvall as a dying old man the two travellers briefly take pity on and a slightly eccentric late appearance from Guy Pearce as another survivor.

The Road is short on dialogue and very bleak in subject matter but nonetheless makes absorbing and affecting viewing.

2009 Venice Film Festival Lineup announced

International competition of feature films, presented as world premieres

FATIH AKIN - SOUL KITCHEN
Germany, 99'
Adam Bousdoukos, Moritz Bleibtreu, Birol Uenel

GIUSEPPE CAPOTONDI - LA DOPPIA ORA
Italy, 95'
Ksenia Rappoport, Filippo Timi, Giorgio Colangeli

POU-SOI CHEANG - YI NGOI
China - Hong Kong, 89'
Louis Koo, Richie Jen, Michelle Ye

PATRICE CHÉREAU - PERSÉCUTION
France, 100'
Romain Duris, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jean Hugues Anglade, Alex Descas

FRANCESCA COMENCINI - LO SPAZIO BIANCO
Italy, 96'
Margherita Buy, Guido Caprino, Salvatore Cantalupo

CLAIRE DENIS - WHITE MATERIAL
France, 100'
Isabelle Huppert, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Isaach De Bankolé

JACO VAN DORMAEL - MR. NOBODY
France,
Jared Leto, Diane Kruger, Sarah Polley

TOM FORD - A SINGLE MAN
USA, 99'
Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode

JESSICA HAUSNER - LOURDES
Austria, 99'
Sylvie Testud, Léa Seydoux, Bruno Todeschini

WERNER HERZOG - BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
USA, 121'
Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Michael Shannon

JOHN HILLCOAT - THE ROAD
USA, 112'
Charlize Theron, Viggo Mortensen, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall

VIMUKHTI JAYASUNDARA - AHASIN WETEI (BETWEEN TWO WORLDS)
Sri Lanka, 80'
Thusitha Laknath, Kaushalya Fernando, Huang Lu

AHMED MAHER - EL MOSAFER
Egypt, 125'
Omar Sharif, Cyrine AbdelNour, Khaled El Nabawy

SAMUEL MAOZ - LEVANON
Israel, 92'
Yoav Donat, Itay Tiran, Oshri Cohen

MICHAEL MOORE - CAPITALISM
USA, 120'
(documentary)

SHIRIN NESHAT - WOMEN WITHOUT MEN
Germany, 95'
Pegah Feridon, Shabnam Tolouei, Orsi Tóth, Arita Shahrzad

MICHELE PLACIDO - IL GRANDE SOGNO
Italy, 101'
Riccardo Scamarcio, Jasmine Trinca, Luca Argentero, Laura Morante, Silvio Orlando

JACQUES RIVETTE - PIC SAINT LOUP
France, 84'
Jane Birkin, Sergio Castellitto, André Marcon, Jacques Bonnaffé

GEORGE ROMERO - SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD
USA, 90'
Alan Van Sprang, Kenneth Walsh, Devon Bostick, Kathleen Munroe

TODD SOLONDZ - LIFE DURING WARTIME
USA, 92'
Ciarán Hinds, Emma Hinz, Charlotte Rampling

GIUSEPPE TORNATORE - BAARÌA
Italy, 150'
Francesco Scianna, Margareth Madè, Raoul Bova, Enrico Lo Verso, Michele Placido, Vincenzo Salemme, Monica Bellucci, Laura Chiatti

SHINYA TSUKAMOTO - TETSUO BULLET MAN
Japan, 80'
Eric Bossick, Akiko Monou, Shinya Tsukamoto

YONFAN - LEI WANGZI
China - Taiwan, Hong Kong, 120'
Chih-Wei Fan, Terri Kwan, Joseph Chang, Kenneth Tsang

"The Wrester" wins the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival!

Welcome to the Oscar race....

VENICE (Reuters) - U.S. movie "The Wrestler" won the Golden Lion for best picture at the Venice film festival on Saturday, winding up the 11-day competition on the Lido waterfront.

The Silver Lion for best director was won by Russia's Alexei German Jr. for "Paper Soldier". The best actor award went to Italy's Silvio Orlando for his role in "Il Papa di Giovanna" ("Giovanna's Father"), and the best actress prize was awarded to Dominique Blanc in "L'Autre" ("The Other One").

First look at Mickey Rourke in Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler"

Both the film and Rourke have been getting some strong praise in Venice, and Rourke is looking more and more like a serious contender for Best Actor. If there's two people in smaller film's that have gotten huge awards buzz boosts from Venice, it's easily Rourke and Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married). While Aronofsky is always an interesting director, the only thing that worries me is the subject matter; modern day wrestling, Mr. Aronofsky....really...do art house movie goers really seem like the type of people who waste their time with that WWE crap? I don't think so. Anyway, here's two videos featuring Rourke, who does seem pretty impressive.

"Rachel Getting Married" earns good reviews at Venice

VENICE -- Jonathan Demme, last in Venice with "The Manchurian Candidate," breathes a breath of honest cinema into a lackluster competition with "Rachel Getting Married," a film whose lightness of touch rides a wave of family conflict to perfectly balance smiles and tears. Playing the spitfire sister of the bride, an award-worthy Anne Hathaway gives the story a clear central focus and offers Jenny Lumet's subtle script some wiggle room to set aside a lot of the usual genre conventions without losing the audience's attention. Though hardly a blockbuster comedy, the Sony Pictures Classics release should gather steam as the awards roll in and word-of-mouth spreads.

Like Robert Altman's 1978 "A Wedding," by which it is clearly inspired, this is a terrific piece of Americana, shot with great spontaneity by cinematographer Declan Quinn. Demme's parallel career as a documentarist spills over into the onscreen music making, improv-style acting and fluid hand-held camera work. They plunge viewers into the thick of Connecticut WASP Rachel Buchman's (Rosemarie DeWitt) wedding to black musician Sydney Williams (Tunde Adebimpe.)

Rachel's wayward sis Kym Buchman (Hathaway), who is fighting drug addiction, has been let out of rehab to attend the wedding. As she arrives, preparations are hot underway in the Buchmans' big family house in the country. Kym's overprotective father (Bill Irwin) treats her gingerly, but Rachel and her best friend Emma (Anisa George) concentrate on damage control as the tough, scarred, self-centered Kym bursts like a uncaged tiger upon their plans for the perfect wedding.

Largely offscreen, but very central to the drama, is Kym and Rachel's remarried mother, Abby (Debra Winger), whose aloofness has its roots in the painful past. As every guest at the wedding knows, and the audience comes to find out, the 16-year-old Kym was high on drugs and driving the car when a family tragedy occurred that no one has been able to forgive. Backed up by a top cast of actors, Hathaway masterfully navigates this complex role with verve, sarcastic one-liners and a controlled mix of toughness and fragility.
Shot through with smart humor, "Rachel" outlaws cliche. Sydney's good-looking best man, Kieran (Mather Zickel), whom Kym has previously spotted at a 12-step meeting for struggling addicts, materializes at the wedding like her perfect romantic partner. In a humorously unexpected twist, Kym immediately beds him in the attic and ignores him for the rest of the film. A whole romantic subplot is nipped in the bud, leaving the screenplay room to open family wounds and explore less predictable territory.

There are moments of heavy-hearted sadness and pain, set off by Zafar Tawil's violin theme, that strike an emotional chord; with great control, Demme balances the bits of melancholia against the loving encirclement of the wedding couple by their guests. Coming from modernly mixed ethnic backgrounds, they warmly represent funny, talented, articulate, liberal America (surely the fact that Sydney and Kieran live in Hawaii is no coincidence?) Raising the spirits is a lot of music-making and joyful song, including a just-right a cappella number by the groom as he and Rachel are about to be pronounced man and wife.