MACHETE, d. Ethan Maniquis & Robert Rodriguez, USA, 2010

About as subtle in its politics as pretty much ever other film Steven Seagal's ever been in (On Deadly Ground, anyone?), this Robert Rodriguez-co-written and co-directed blood-fest has a peculiar wayof getting across its 'critique' of anti-immigration rhetoric in the United States. To my mind, it shoots itself (very bloodily) in the foot at pretty much every cinematic turn - its sexist, racist and pointlessly bloody representations do nothing to either promote such a legitimate critical stance, nor to succeed (are they meant to?) in being 'reflexive' or otherwise intelligently lampooning such cinematic 'conventions'.

The basic storyline is silly, but everyone knows that doesn't bother me: federale (Danny Trejo as Machete) has his family killed and house burned down when he tries to protect a potential witness against a gangster named Torriz (Steven Seagal). Three years later, our tale starts - when Machete is hired to shoot McLaughlin (De Niro's rabidly anti-immigration senator), but it's a set-up designed to curry favour with the voters, and to stir up trouble with 'The Network', a group of people who help Mexicans cross the border and get jobs, and the vigilante group out to stop them. It also turns out - of course - that Torrez is involved, and that Machete's brother - now a priest (oh yes) - gets dragged into things too. Throw in a few steotypical blonde bimbos and sultry latina women (including a bunch who wear skimpy outfits to strip down cars), and things can only get worse.

ALL the female characters are played by young, crazy-skinny and always-made-up women who, for the most part, just really don't fit the roles. (This is not a dig at the actresses: both Michelle Rodriguez as Luz, and Jessica Alba as Sartana are pretty good with what they're given.) The pathetic attempts at 'playing' with the overt sexualisation of all the women in the film - e.g. the close-up ofa nurse's barely-covered arse and her 'witty' come-back to the doctor ogling her - just don't cut it. Stupid 'knowing' dialogue of that nature does nothing to undercut the unimaginative 'woman-as-sex-object' visual representations replicated and enforced by this film. Ditto the 'funny' sequence in which the 'racism' of Mexicans already over the border and working (in kitchens) in the USofA aren't exactly insightful and compelling. (The sequence I'm thinking of is where a Mexican dishwasher watching TV agrees enthusiastically with McLaughlin's strategy to "close the border"; his white co-worker reminds him he crossed the border to get there, to which he replies that's why it's oay with him if they go ahead and close the border now.... blah blah blah.)

Oh, and making one its bad guys not just racist and a grug traffiker but also as somebody with incestuous desires for his daughter? Not the best writing choice.

Overall, the film's anti-anti-immigration politics might be admirable, but that's about all that is. And since it just uses them as an excuse for a particularly unpleasant stream of bloody murders, and is very very confused about the 'rights' and 'wrongs' of the complex contexts of immigration into Texas - failing dismally, in my estimation, to make any helpful or coherent commentary on the situation - I can't really recommend much of anything about this film apart from some of the acting.

My overwhelming thought was that in its use of OTT senatorial sound-bites and TV reports, as well as in its use of ultra-violence, the film tries to embody the kind of searing social satire of a film like RoboCop (or even Scarface (1983)?!). But it fails. Completely. I do get that it's an 'exploitation' movie; but really, WTF is the point - any more - of just making a bad exploitation movie? If it's for profit, then the 'critique' the film offers is completely undermined; again, it shoots itself in the foot (well, the head, really!).

I saw this, by the way, because it was playing at 9am this morning on Korean TV. The mind boggles.

Oh and I was going to say that I at least liked one line: "Machete don't text". But they ruined even that. (Later, he texts. *rolls eyes*)

LAWLESS, d. John Hillcoat, USA 2012

Decidedly unconvinced that anything (other than Transformers) starring Shia LeBeouf could be any good, I was skeptical... but this was a surprise, in that it was not only an interesting, well-crafted movie with some great acting, but LeBeouf didn't ruin it at all. He was pretty good.

Not usually prone to comment on directors, but on the films 'themselves', I'm nevertheless going to say that part of what I thought was intelligent and engaging about Lawless was its almost Verhoeven-like displays - and critique - of violence. This was coupled with an interesting martial-arts-B-movie approach to the consequences of violence, especially killing: interestingly, while I was watching it, the film struck me as being horrifically violent and nastily so - which I didn't enjoy one bit. But I realised that in fact it was - a la B-movies of Van Damme and his ilk - actually very moralising in terms of its attitude to violence, and especially to murder. It did display some horrific violence - and 'even' the sympathetic characters (the Bondurant brothers, played by Tom Hardy, Le Beouf and Jason Clarke) made me sick at times, and Hardy's character, Forrest, was particularly violent. (The baggy-cardi and knuckleduster combo was seriously alarming!) But as the film went on, it was interesting to see how the plot revolved very closely around the notion that actual death - murder, rather than 'mere' violence on bodies - was not to be tolerated, in the ethos of the film (and, it suggested, of the Bondurants and their community). In a not always entirely convincing way at times, but in quite a forceful way, the film presented the notion that while 'boys will be boys' (especially with the motivating context of Prohibition and those in power on the make), some behaviour is simply unacceptable. Since this is not the norm in mainstream action films, so often, I kind of liked this about the film: to me, its cameraderie with B-movies on this point made it far more engaging to me than most films of its genre. (The genre of Lawless, by the way, is something of a hybrid gangster-western mix.)

Of course Verhoeven's films tend to critique violence precisely by having dead bodies everywhere: Lawless doesn't do that, but what is similar is the display of excessive, extravagantly cinematic violence committed on bodies. Displays that promise to actually make one think about the actual violence committed, rather than just accept it as another narrative device. The opening image (of killing a pig) resonates far more once the film makes this clear, too: initially I just found it horrific and pointless - and the way it's echoed at the end is problematic, for sure. But at the same time, it plays well with the film's overall approach to violence, and its ... seriousness, for want of a better term.

Elements of the story are somewhat naff and tired - the 'crippled' character, the romance for our boy LeBeouf (although the church sequence is hilarious!), the ex prostitute escaping the city. At the same time, their very generic nature adds something to the film, and to its criticism of violence and what it does to people. 

Speaking of ex prostitutes, the central female character in this film, Maggie Beaumont (Jessica Chastain - who was in the horrifically awful and pretentiousTree of Life), does not get to do an awful lot. But she's crucial to us not hating Forrest, and also to his enduring legend; it's true that her character is defined almost entirely by her sexuality - she was a prostitue, she is raped, and her primary role is as a romantic interest who 'develops' Forrest's character for us. And I find some of that hard to take - especially where she ends up at the conclusion of the film. But, frankly, it could be far worse: as it is, she at least takes some control over her life - in the limited ways available to her - and the camera at least doesn't ogle her.

Hard to comment on this movie without mentioning Guy Pearce. He over-acts his socks off - and it pretty much works. He has to, really, as Gary Oldman also features (if briefly). Anyway, I did quite enjoy the contempt he expresses for all the other characters on screen, and his sense of self-importance and invincibility (opposed to Forrest's mythical inability to die). Maybe a bit over-done, but still enjoyable if you just go with it and accept the pantomime villain moments as part of his panache.

The detail in the writing of the characters is nice, and unsurprising from Nick Cave. Certainly it's a result of the precise writing, I think - along with acting that complements it beautifully - that makes the film successfully embody Cave's comment (reported in the Guardian) that "Lawless is not so much a true story as a true myth".

   

ARGO, d. Ben Affleck, USA 2012

Amazingly (to me, anyway) I loved this film! It actually succeeded in being very very funny at times (though calling it a comedy is slightly insane), which I think made it all the more powerful in terms of its telling its "true" story.

I can't quite believe it myself, but I thought it was extremely well directed - at least until towards the end, as I did think it lost it a bit when it changed from a calm, sometimes almost Michael Mann-esque pace and style to a far more mainstream Hollywood-paced cutting to make the end more "cinematic" (i.e. fake) as the journey towards the airport began and progressed. And believe me, suggesting this film - any film - has Michael Mann-like direction is a huge compliment from me. I am not entirely sure what struck me about it to make that point - I saw it a few days ago, and should've reviewed it then, not now! - but the pace and the style and the mise-en-scene all contributed, as did the use of music, the use of close-ups, and also the focus, I suppose, on the meandering threads of the central character's life... And the early sequences in the Embassy, especially, were beautifully paced and choreographed and shot. I still can't quite believe it! The sense of rising urgency, the seemingly silly (but ultimately very important) obsession with destroying documents, the looks on Embassy staff and Iranian citizens' faces... all very dramatic, very engaging, very intense - but never over-done, and without ever resorting to theatrical screams or caricatures.

It really was a shame it went a bit pear-shaped at the end. In some ways, pursuing the Michael Mann route might've saved it: i.e., had Affleck drawn out the film anther 45 minutes, he might've avoided the too-fast-paced problems, and carried on making a persuasively political and emotive film, rather than a sort of escape flick. Who knows. Maybe not!

The casting was brilliant: Tate Donovan and Zeljko Ivanek were both in it - fairly small roles, but amazing and I love them both... and, seriously, JOHN GOODMAN was in it. Wonderful! He was his usual excellent self, and worked well alongside Alan Arkin... the hostages were excellent (and I dig the 1970s clothes and hair, I have to say)... and a small highlight for me (which should embarrass me but doesn't) is that the Canadian ambassador is played by none other than Victor Garber (Sidney's dad in ALIAS!).

You'll notice I've mentioned not one actress's name. This is because there are barely any women in the film. It's about a CIA operation in the 1970s. Enough said.

I don't feel like I am doing this film justice. I thought it was moving and genuinely funny at times, that it managed to acknowledge that whatever their means of displaying it (hostage-taking not being ideal), the Iranians were far from 'wrong' in what they did, ultimately, and I do think it's a positive film to make and release in the current global, deeply racist, climate. Whether or not it'll be read and recieved that way, I don't know. But the body of the film - again, though, NOT so much the end - works for me.

The juxtapositioning of the crazy Hollywood nonsense and the hostage crisis, by the way - especially the sequence intercutting the reading-through of the fake film with the realities of life in Tehran - was really effective, really well done. It was never crass, and never ridiculed anyone. It managed to be hilarious at times, but also very poignant. Quite an achievement given the subject matter of the film, and the frippery that makes up so much of what Hollywood, in contrast, is and does.
 

PERFECT SENSE – d. David Mackenzie, UK/Sweden/Denmark/Ireland, 2011

This is another film I watched on a long-haul flight, so the viewing conditions were hardly great. However, as far as I could tell, despite my initial scepticism as I started watching it and realised what it was ‘about’, it ended up being a surprisingly intriguing and moving film that I really enjoyed, and actually did feel moved by.

Both Ewan McGregor (Michael) and Eva Green (Susan) are excellent, and the cast overall works well. I could’ve done without the setting up of Susan and Michael as hopeless singles who are nonetheless destined to fall in love, and generally felt the start of the film was quite rocky. It does, though, quickly move to being more convincing and more engaging, and when the futility of Susan’s job (contrasted with the initial way Michael and his colleagues start to address what’s happening to people) becomes evident, the film takes on more depth: no explanation is offered for what happens to people’s senses, and the emphasis is very much on how different people respond to it, and what it might ‘mean’ in a more existential, or even ontological, sense. It is in that way I think more interesting than other films about the actual or potential end of the world as we know it – from disaster films to zombie films to something such as Signs (d. M. Night Shyamalan, 2002) – and also does more (at least on film) with ideas around different senses and synaesthesia than does even an interesting film such as Blindness (d. Fernando Meirelles, 2008). Its focus on everyday, mundane things such as what we eat - and how important taste is to us, and how it's in fact far from mundane when it's taken from us, and how people realise that and cope with it - well, that alone is probably worth watching this film for, especially as what we eat is used as a pwerful metaphor for all sorts of other aspects of our existence, the environment and bodies within which we exist, and our attitudes towards them. ("Fat and flour", indeed!)

The poignancy of the ending works, which surprised me, even as I’d been drawn in as the film goes along: it was not quite the ending I expected, and was all the more powerful for that. The whole film, in retrospect, was thoughtful and engaging and makes one think about the importance of our particular ways of being embodied in the world, and what might happen – literally and metaphorically – when we mess too much with the world in which we have to be embodied, in order to be.

PREMIUM RUSH, d. David Koepp, USA, 2012

I just saw Premium Rush – a movie about bike messengers in New York City who get caught up in some illegal dealings involving a crooked cop and a (legal) immigrant friend of theirs… Didn’t sound like it’d be up to much, and also started out feeling VERY much like Crank… But ended up going in quite a different direction, although being stylistically interesting in some sometimes slightly similar ways (good ways, I might add!). 

The film is really well cast, I thought. From the one true bad guy (Michael Shannon; who managed to be remarkably sympathetic – quite a feat given just what a ‘douchebag’ his character in fact is) to the central protagonist (amazingly, a young white guy! ) and his fellow messengers and bikers – not to mention the cycle cop and the kids on school buses – there were no real cracks in the acting. The cycling politics were interesting (especially when our hero has the bad guy shouting in his face that everyone in the city hates him – which is possibly true! – and when, in passing, we see the aftermath of what happens when messengers use the sidewalk instead of the road)… But interesting not just about cyclists’ place vis-à-vis cars and pedestrians, but also in terms of the motivation and risks to those who choose to cycle at breakneck speed around Manhattan rather than work in an office… and how significant those motives are to their involvement in the cyclist community. It’s not deep or anything, but it is thoughtful(!).

And while there is – of course: *yawn* – an element of ‘romance’ to the film, whereby the main female protagonist is introduced to us largely via our hero, Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), she is at least an excellent cyclist and an active participant in the narrative as well as the action: she (Vanessa, played by Dania Ramirez), like Gordon-Levitt, is also immensely engaging and likeable, which certainly helps. The visual (re)presentation of the characters is also not too bad when it comes to gender: Vanessa wears a sleeveless top, sure – but also, loose shorts like Wilee, and she’s not overly objectified, ‘even’ in scenes where she easily could be (such as the flashback sequences in a bar). Similarly, the film avoids sexualizing/objectifying its other key character, Vanessa’s roommate Nima (Jamie Chung), who walks around in flats and plain work clothes. (Nima is, though, very much a female character in terms of her role, and the particular predicament she’s in that sets off the film’s core narrative.) And even if the gendered stuff seems okay, nothing is simple: it’s fellow bike messenger Manny (Wolé Parks) who wears a vest and tight lycra shorts – and Manny is, you guessed it, a Black guy. He’s also referred to (by Wilee) as being ‘roided up’, and is framed as a sexual predator, albeit not an aggressive one. In contrast to them all, Wilee predictably remains un-raced and un-gendered in that he’s just who he is, dressed in loose shorts and a t-shirt, with his physique correspondingly treated just that bit differently from both Vanessa’s and Manny’s… So you know, it’s not as if there aren’t some issues around the film’s representations of both gender and race – but it could be one hell of a lot worse!

Actually, it might be. The way the Chinese are ultimately represented is... problematic at best. But at least interesting-problematic, rather than just crappy-problematic. (And it maybe gets away with it because sympathetic or not, Michael Shannon's bad guy really IS bad!)

Oh and the action in this movie is pretty great. I really enjoyed the cycling scenes – even the ‘race’ between Manny and Wilee, and even when Wilee uses his cycling skills to send the poor cycle cop flying!

A fun movie, some nice action, and an interesting take on cyclists and how and why they do what they do. Also, Wilee’s bad luck with sandwiches did elicit my sympathy – as did, of course, the play on Wil E. Coyote and the Road Runner inherent in his name (even if Gordon-Levitt is not quite Tommy Lee Jones!).

THE BOURNE LEGACY – d. Tony Gilroy, USA, 2012

I have very little bad to say about this film, but not that much especially positive either. To be fair, the latter in particular could be because I saw it too late at night, but who knows! 

In essence, I liked Jeremy Renner, I liked Rachel Weisz, and was very happy to see Zeljko Ivanek (whom I remember always as Ray Fisk in Damages) in the movie. I also liked how they had Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) back in the film (in a scarily convincing turn of events), and Oscar Isaac (of whom it was all too easy to believe his only sin was to have fallen in love!)…

What I did not enjoy, though, was the really rather boring and repetitive central heterosexual ‘romance’ around our Bourne-esque protagonist and his partner-in-escape; nor the glaringly conspicuous ‘united colours of…’ aspect of the movie’s having various ‘diverse’ ethnicities represented across the range of Treadstone/Outcome agents (and even a woman, shock horror): really, WTF is the point, anyway, when the film is in fact focused quite intently on a young white male with a number of similarities to Matt Damon? None of these ‘faults’ can be laid at the door of the actors – Renner included, who was excellent. However, the lack of thought and range of diversity of relationships (as much as ‘colour’) did detract from the whole thing, for me.

And don’t get me started on the Asian Terminator-like character…

The fight scenes were a bit crappy, too (not helped by the iddiot jock sat right in front of me who guffawed in that moron-like way only they can EVERY frickin' time someone got hit. Gah.): they were over-edited and as a result there were too many flailing limbs and insufficient evidence of actual fighting. Hardly a major cmplaint, but when the action is about the most exciting thing a film has to offer, it really should be better than it was in this one!

The echoes of Renner’s role in The Hurt Locker were also slightly problematic, and set up a slight dissonance, I think, which was a shame.

All that said, for what it was (and it was nothing special), the film was interesting and had plenty fun parts, and some great acting. It also acknowledged that the early parts in which wolves are apparently tracking human prey is not the norm (the suggestion being that perhaps the Bourne clones aren’t ‘human’), which I appreciated – having been pretty pissed off when the early scenes implied that’s what wolves do. (In fact it gave me flashbacks to sitting through The Edge (1997, d.  Lee Tamahori), in which a bear chased Anthony Hopkins and a Baldwin brother relentlessly, and made me wish it would just eat them already, to get over the ridiculousness of it all.) 

Really, I just wish it had mixed things up a bit: much as I love Weisz, I just would’ve been that much more interested in a film that had her in the crazy doctor role, and  Ivanek on the run with Renner. Now that would’ve been doing something new and interesting!