Review: American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999)

American Beauty, the Academy Award winning collaboration between Sam Mendes (director of Road to Perdition, Jarhead and Revolutionary Road) and Alan Ball (writer, creator of Six Feet Under and True Blood), was one of the most intelligent, provocative and respected dramas of 1999. Winner of awards for Best Picture, Director (Mendes), Screenplay (Ball), Actor (Kevin Spacey) and Cinematography (Conrad L. Hall), American Beauty is a definitive cinematic achievement and considered one of the greatest films ever made about the hollow existence of American suburban life. To complement the beautiful cinematography and fine performances, Alan Ball's script is the perfect balance of hilarious comedy, and tragic drama and misunderstanding. Seamlessly weaving together the love stories of its brilliant ensemble, this is a definitive classic not to be missed.

At the heart of American Beauty is Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a middle-aged writer for a magazine who is deep in a funk. He loathes his job, he is tired of his alienating suburban existence, and his withdrawal from living the life he used to lead. As revealed in his opening voice-over monologue, Lester narrates the story from an afterlife, and the film reveals the events via flashback. Of course, we know that he will ultimately be killed at the conclusion, it's the bizarre series of events that occur throughout the final year of his life that makes this film so memorable. The films tracks his life-changing decisions that bring both the self-happiness he had long forgotten, but it also impacts the lives of those around him. Lester lives in a beautiful home in the middle of Californian suburbia. Surrounded by a neighborhood of houses that all look the same, and with his own home adorned with expensive commodities, Lester has lost his grasp on life and feels 'sedated'. His wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) is an ambitious real-estate broker who assumes complete control of the marriage, while their sixteen-year old daughter, Jane (Thora Birch), repulsed by her parents 'fake' marriage and lack of interest in her, has self-esteem issues. Beginning with a high aerial zoom shot into the Burnham's neighborhood and street, the opening sequence is accompanied by Lester's amusing narration.

"My name is Lester Burnham. This is my neighborhood. This is my street. This...is my life. I'm 42 years old and in less than a year I'll be dead. Of course I don't know that yet, but in a way, I'm dead already."

We see his blatant indifference to daily existence, as he clumsily climbs out of bed, showers and naps in the back seat of the car while his wife drives him to work. By revealing that he will soon be dead it challenges the audience to question their own mortality and to 'look closer' and be aware of the beauty present in the world around them. The film satirizes the American middle-class and their notions of the meaning, satisfaction and beauty that drive their lives. Living on either side of the Burnham's are a gay couple both named Jim, and the recently moved in Fitts family, domineered by retired United States Marine Corps Colonel Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper). His son Ricky (Wes Bentley), a marijuana smoking drug dealer, attends the same school as Jane, and befriends Lester when they meet one night at the bar where Ricky also works. Ricky has a habit of filming his surroundings with his hand-held video camera, and he stores hours of footage on tapes in his room. The infamous 'dancing bag' shot is revealed later in the film, from his wealth of footage.

Lester begins an infatuation with Jane's cheerleader girlfriend Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari), and has a number of erotic dreams and hallucinations involving her. When Lester overhears Angela telling Jane that she would be attracted to him if he bulked his physique, he sets up a weight machine in his garage, and begins taking daily jogs with the Jims. With his new boss preparing a redundancy package for him at work, he decides to blackmail him into a $60,000 settlement and resigns, finding limited responsibility employment at a fast food chain. He buys his dream car and starts smoking Ricky's marijuana.
All of a sudden Lester finds himself living again. At the same time, however, the rest of Lester's family are taking their own twisted journey through their lives. Not content with her marriage to Lester, Carolyn discusses a divorce and begins an adulterous affair with rival real estate mogul, Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher). Jane is intrigued by Ricky's infatuation with filming her, and finds that he can see into her even more than she can, and recognizes her true beauty. But Ricky receives strict discipline at home after his homophobic father finds his captured footage of Lester exercising naked, and assumes his only son is gay. The lives of all the characters weave together seamlessly, and slowly unravel through several tragic misunderstandings. It's a tribute to Alan Ball's script in that it maintains such an engaging atmosphere throughout, while also successfully examining the quite complex themes of personal imprisonment and redemption, social conformity and sexual repression, without becoming too pretentious, a trait commonly tagged to the film.

Thomas Newman's score, a now recognizable part of popular culture, is a mix of gorgeous percussion-dominated instrumentals that work to delicately balance the stunning cinematography with the script's moral ambiguity. The soundtrack also includes an eclectic mix of pop songs, including tracks from The Who, Bob Dylan and Jimmy Hendrix. Sam Mendes is yet to make a bad film, but none of his recent work has ever recaptured the magic of his debut feature. Alan Ball, the creator of one of televisions pinnacle achievements in Six Feet Under, endows the narrative with witty, character driven drama, which takes the audience on a complex journey through American suburbia, tracking a series of love stories that reveal everything wrong with American life. The ensemble is uniformly perfect. Kevin Spacey is outstanding, and gives the best performance of his career. While the performances of Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper and Peter Gallagher are also excellent. 

American Beauty is one of my personal favorite films, and while there is so much more to say about the layers of narrative, and what the central meaning of the film is, I find it better just to just enjoy the characters. I don't think I have laughed more than at the scenes involving Lester's cynical rants to his boss and his wife. It is one of the most lusciously photographed films I have ever seen and one of the most consistently entertaining comedy-dramas in my collection. Most people who love cinema will have already seen it, and i have found it tends to divide opinions, but I urge anyone yet to be exposed to it's beauty, for lack of a better word, you should make the effort.

My Rating: 5 Stars

Classic Throwback: The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)

The Apartment was an an immediate classic, and destined to remain that way. Billy Wilder is such a brilliant filmmaker, capable of making films across multiple genres with an ability to draw almost any emotion from his audience. Winner of five Academy Wards (including Best Picture), The Apartment is both a hilarious satire about corporate businessmen and the affairs that fill their lives, and a moving drama about individualism and living a life free from the influence of others. C. C Baxter (Jack Lemon) is a man with a great apartment and dreams of rising the New York corporate business ranks. When his bosses, mostly greedy self-serving scumbags, become aware of his social hot spot, he grants them access to stage secret extramarital liaisons, and they repay him with glowing reports that spur his quick jump through the corporate ranks. While Baxter isn't pleased with the situation, he chooses not to challenge their requests and struggles to juggle on his schedule their conflicting demands.

When Baxter falls for his bosses' most recent mistress, the sweet and funny elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), his life becomes complicated as he struggles to not only win the girl but keep his cushy promotion. There are many tragic sequences. One notable example is when Baxter is given two tickets to a Broadway musical from Mr Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) to ensure he is absent from his apartment. He asks Fran to accompany him, but she had already agreed to a liaison with Sheldrake at Baxter's apartment, which unknown to Baxter, results in him being stood up. In the Christmas Eve sequence we cut between Fran in Baxter's apartment eying off his sleeping pills, while a depressed Baxter sits in a bar, knowing that Sheldrake is bedding the girl he loves, and finds himself being picked up by a woman who is just as sad and lonely as he is.

The film tackles some pretty strong themes, drawing controversy on initial release due to its promotion of infidelity and adultery. While also addressing themes of prostitution, blackmail and urban alienation, a large part of the film is devoted to Baxter's care for Kubelik in his apartment after her near-successful overdose on sleeping pills. Quite a serious story arc for a film distributed as a comedy. Wilder's wonderful screenplay, which was a working collaboration with Izzy Diamond, treads a fine line between comedy and tragedy, sparking both hysterics and pathos from its audience. Jack Lemmon is such a likable performer and he brings brilliant energy to this role, where his fast talking and quirky mannerisms work beautifully. Shirley MacLaine, like Lemmon, won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for her fine performance. Fred MacMurray is also great as Mr Sheldrake, Baxter's scheming boss. Widely regarded as one of the greatest black comedies of all time, The Apartment is glorious entertainment, and sure to be a hit for any lover of cinema.

My Rating: 5 Stars

Are 'The Wicker Man' and 'Shutter Island' Distant Relatives?

It really dawned on me during the opening minutes of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island how much the film's plot resembles that of Robin Hardy's British horror classic, The Wicker Man (1973). Both lead characters, U.S Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) are called out to a mysterious island to investigate the inexplicable disappearance of a missing female. Howie, a Christian policeman with strict adherence to British law, goes alone, while Daniels is accompanied by his partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo). Shutter Island has many sudden twists and turns and the order of events that the film originally adopts becomes long forgotten in the latter half, as the film becomes increasingly more complex and ambitious. For a first-time viewer, the original set-up is strikingly similar. Your awareness of the connection between the two depends on which character you follow through Shutter Island, and how much you already know about the film. 

The Wicker Man is not only one of my favorite horror films, but one of my favorite films, period. Sergeant Howie receives an urgent call about a missing young girl named Rowan Morrison, who has vanished from the Heathen populated Island of Summerisle without a trace. He travels to the island by seaplane, and is brought to the shore in the dingy supplied by the harbourmaster. Seemingly puzzled by his arrival, he and the welcoming party of elderly gentlemen at the dock offer no cooperation and fail to recognize the missing girl when shown the photograph sent with the request. Later inquiries with other members of the community, draw resentment and unrest and lead to unanimous insistence that the girl is already dead. Not easily deterred, and convinced that the Island holds some sinister secrets, especially after he finds out about their Pagan religious influences, he becomes obsessed with finding the girl, and makes it his agenda to search the entire island. Despite finding the missing girl or not, he intends to report the nature of their religious cult to the mainland. Little does Sergeant Howie realize that every movement on the island he makes is being carefully controlled by the locals, who may wish to keep him around to feature amongst their annual May Day festivities.

The opening sequence of Shutter Island introduces the characters of Daniels and Aule, revealing that they had never met one another prior to their assignment to this case and the ferry transporting them is fast approaching Shutter Island, the site of a mental asylum for the criminally insane. They are there to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando, a woman convicted of murdering her three children, who had escaped the asylum through her locked cell sometime during the night. When they arrive on the island they are met by an impatient, patronizing and on-edge unit of guards that drive them from the ferry dock to the gates of the facility, and outline the protocol that must be obeyed during their investigation. When they begin their questioning, they receive even less co-operation from the orderlies, and the chief psychiatrist, Dr John Cawley (Ben Kingsley). We discover that Daniels had previously investigated Ashcliffe and had uncovered a potential conspiracy involving unlawful treatment of difficult patients. We also learn that Daniels’ wife had been killed years previous in a house fire started by an Andrew Laeddus, still believed to be a current patient at the asylum. Daniels had volunteered for this mission, with a personal agenda beyond the missing woman. 

The asylum's correctional officers barely assist with a search of the surrounding cliffs, and appear aggravated to be involved. Despite Daniels' request, the are denied access to the private records of the patients and the orderlies, and seemingly misled regarding the practices of the doctors. Rachel Solando's chief psychiatrist, Dr Sheehan, was also mysteriously allowed to leave the island the morning after her escape, proving to be a suspicious inconvenience. From the moment they arrive nothing is as it seems and a spiral of riddles motivates an obsessive hunt for the truth. Daniels shows the same commitment to unraveling the truth about the missing woman as Howie does; a maniacal obsession with either finding the woman or uncovering the sinister practices of Cawley and his staff. A number of observations can be made about the strange behaviors of some of the characters. Why do some of the characters seem amused by Daniels' presence on the island, and even recognize him at times? Why does Chuck seem to hang back and observe and allow Daniels' to be the sole voice of the investigation?

Eventually, Daniels seems to become self-aware that he may have been lured to the island for a purpose. Perhaps he is now a target because of his past investigation into Cawley's methods. Unable to leave the island because of a hurricane, he makes it his mission to scour the entire island and uncover as much as possible. Gradually taking a personal toll on Daniels, demons from his past begin to dominate his reality as the environment disintegrates his sanity. The key similarity is that both men are driven blindly by the quest for justice, and are naive to the reality of their situation, which brings about their failure. Both Scorsese and Hardy implement clever techniques that provide hints to the audience that there is another answer to the mystery beyond the perspective of their central protagonists, and a careful viewer will put the pieces together before they do themselves. Both brilliant films in their own right, The Wicker Man an already established classic, and Shutter Island destined to be one, the distinct similarities are quite interesting to dissect.

Releases 03/03

Opening in Australian cinemas today we have four new releases:

The Adjustment Bureau: Written and directed by George Nolfi, and starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, The Adjustment Bureau is a romanctic thriller that tells the strange story of David Norris (Damon), a charismatic New York politician running for the United States Senate. He is approached one day by the Adjustment Bureau, a mysterious team of operatives that declare he must direct his own life according to a specific plan drawn up by them, or risk being 'reset' (lobotomised?). Having just met the woman of his dreams (Emily Blunt), and wishing to abandon the life chosen by the Bureau, he seeks her down, placing both of their lives in danger. Strong early reports suggest that this is a genuinely exciting thriller that will keep you on the edge-of-your-seat. The likable leads should be enough to draw solid numbers at the box office.

Hall Pass: The latest Farrelly Brothers (There's Something About Mary) outing sounds horrendous. Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) are best friends who have both found trouble in their respective marriages. When the two begin to show signs of restlessness at home, their wives (Jenna Fischer, Christina Applegate) take a bold approach to revitalizing their marriages: granting them a "hall pass," one week of freedom to do whatever they want...no questions asked. This will be one of many gross-out buddy comedies released this year that display the perpetual immaturity of the American male, and I'm sure it won't be the funniest (sitting on 36% at RT). Still, renowned Australian model turned actress, Nicky Whelan has a small topless cameo, which could make it almost worth it. But I say PASS.

Wasted on the Young: Don't know too much about it. It's an Australian film starring Alex Russell and Oliver Ackland as step brothers who reach conflict after the drugging and assault of a school colleague at a wild party. Could be worth a look if you wish to support the local industry.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest: The final installment in the well-received Millennium trilogy, the adapted Swedish features from Stieg Larsson's acclaimed novels. I have heard that this is a dull and uneven final chapter that fails to capture the same chemistry between the leads as the first two did. If this is the case, I'm not sure I'll make it through. I have also seen the film called 'The Best Thriller of the Decade', which seems to be ridiculously high praise. If you are a fan of the novels, and have seen and enjoyed the first two films in the series, you will want to check out how it all culminates. If not, I wouldn't bother.

So, there you are. A quick rundown of this week's releases. I'll likely check out The Adjustment Bureau and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest if I can fit them in over the weekend!

New Release Review: Conviction (Tony Goldwyn, 2010)

When I first saw the trailer for Tony Goldwyn's Conviction and saw that the film the tagged as an 'incredible story based on true events', and starred a number of past Oscar winners and nominees, I originally dismissed it as another Oscar baiting story that didn't make the cut this year. I assumed it would be dull, disengaging and noticeably showy of the performances. The film follows Betty-Anne Waters (Hillary Swank), a tough working-class woman and mother of two, who becomes dedicated to righting a wrong. She puts herself through a law degree at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island in order to practice law professionally and subsequently overturn her older brother Kenny's (Sam Rockwell) wrongful murder conviction from 1983. The terribly titled Conviction, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2010, amounted to everything I expected.

While the performances from Swank and Rockwell are quite solid, everything else about this film is completely absent of any flair and never escapes the waters of mediocrity. It's poorly written and directed, and there is nothing imaginative about the way it is shot, edited or scored. Far from exciting or compelling, the plot (which struggled to fill the 107 minute running time) is so thinly constructed that her journey feels like it was made for people with a complete absence of knowledge about the legal system. I don't pretend to know much about law, but most of the legal procedures just seemed implausible. As the film is 'based on a true story', many will already know the inevitable outcome. Betty manages to investigate Kenny's case while completing her degree, and once she is qualified, she tracks down the evidence long believed to have been destroyed, and manages to overturn his conviction by revealing that the DNA from the blood of the perpetrator found at the crime scene didn't match that of her brothers, despite them sharing the same blood type. Betty Anne collaborates with fellow graduate Abra Rice (Minnie Driver) and Barry Scheck (Peter Gallagher in a nothing role), the leader of the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to using DNA evidence to overturn wrongful convictions, to collect the evidence necessary to prove his innocence, and overturn the previous testimonies of corrupt police officer, Nancy Taylor (Melissa Leo in an aggravating performance) and Kenny's former lovers (Clea DuVall and Juliette Lewis).

It is not a particularly interesting story, and left in the inexperienced hands of Tony Goldwyn, it is a floundering, plodding ordeal. With the outcome inevitable, it should be the extraordinary journey of Betty Anne, and the emotional self-sacrifices she makes for her sake of her family, that drives the drama. But we rarely see her immersed in her study, and I think there are only two shots of her at the University. All of a sudden she is an attorney. Each new development feels frustratingly convenient,  from the evidence miraculously turning up after several unsuccessful attempts to locate it, to the reversed testimonies of the women without any real pressure. You also question why she is so devoted to Kenny, and this is somewhat successfully explained in a number of poorly structured flashbacks to their childhood, which establishes their bond from a young age. Rockwell gives quite a charismatic performance, but I felt emotionally detached throughout. Swank plays the tough, determined woman well, but much like the entire experience, she is quite dull. Conviction is a difficult film to comment on because it doesn't have anything glaring that makes it an easy target to criticize, but it possesses few good qualities either. It wasn't entertaining, and it didn't present an engaging story I felt compelled to care about. Give it a miss.

My Rating: 2 Stars

25 Best Films of 2010 (Updated)

Well, now that I have seen most of the delayed 2010 releases in Australian cinemas, I thought I would update my list of 25 Best Films of the Year!

You can find my January 1 list here: (25-11) and (10-1)

25. Monsters (Gareth Edwards)

24. Four Lions (Chris Morris)

23. The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski) 

22. Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell)

21. How to Train Your Dragon (Chris Sander, Dean Deblois)

20. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Edgar Wright)

19. True Grit (Joel and Ethan Coen)

18. I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino)

17. The American (Anton Corbijn)

16. Let Me In (Matt Reeves)

15. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) 

14. Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese)

13. The Secret in Their Eyes (Juan Jose Campanella)

12. Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)

11. Animal Kingdom (David Michod)

10. Another Year (Mike Leigh)

9. Toy Story 3 (Pete Unkrich)

8. Inside Job (Charles Ferguson)

7. The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko)

6. Winter's Bone (Debra Granik)

5. Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance)

4. Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky)

3. 127 Hours (Danny Boyle)

2. Inception (Christopher Nolan) 

1. The Social Network (David Fincher)

Classic Throwback: M (Fritz Lang, 1931)

I am endeavouring to make the Classic Throwback a regular weekly installment on the Emporium. I am thinking every Monday. I do love to sit back and watch an old classic on a Friday night. But yesterday was of course, Oscar Day, so I was busy hosting a gathering at my house and reporting my jubilation and displeasure (mostly) at the course of the proceedings. So, it's a day later this week.

Here is a short review of Fritz Lang's classic masterpiece, M (1931).

Fritz Lang, the director of Metropolis (1927) and one of Germany's most acclaimed early directors, created his first sound film in 1931. This film, starring Peter Lorre, is M. Fritz Lang, along with his wife, Thea Von Harbou, wrote the screenplay that chronicles the tale of a serial killer and paedophile, Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre), who preys on young children. It is one of the best and earliest examples of the police procedural and effectively portrays society's transformation of the criminal into a celebrity, who manages to impact the daily lives of all of the city's citizens. M tackles some pretty strong themes for such an old film.
The film follows the city's (presumably Berlin) descent into panic mode when a number of children fall victim to the child killer, where at first, there are no conceivable leads to direct the full-scale investigation. The film opens following a man, presumably Beckert, as he buys a balloon from a blind street vendor. We do not see his face at this point, just shots of his body, and his projected shadow. He whistles Grieg's  'In the Hall of the Mountain King', and uses the balloons as a way to attract the children to him. Superimposed together we see the parallel stories of a young girl, named Elsie Beckmann, as she leaves her school and walks toward her home, and her mother, who is tending to household duties and eagerly expecting her daughter home at the usual time. We see Elsie happily bouncing a ball and laughing, before she is approached by Beckert and given the balloon. Meanwhile her mother becomes distraught when she hasn't yet returned, and frantically starts calling her name out the window. The tension mounts as we suspect that Elsie has been abducted, and then we are revealed to two shots, of the small ball rolling unattended into the grass, and of the balloon now ensnared in telephone lines, and our suspicions are rendered true.

Following her disappearance the police begin a full-scale investigation, using state-of-the-art techniques of fingerprint and handwriting analysis. They comb the entire city for clues and evidence; they stage raids and interview known members of the criminal underworld. They even look into all the psychiatric patients and draw up a list of recently released patients with a history of offenses against children. While the Police are investigating as best they can, the members of the city's underworld stage a meeting and decide to find the man themselves, to end the recent lock down of their business interests. It becomes a race for desired justice, whether lawful or civil. Beckert mistakenly reveals himself by whistling the same charismatic tune in the presence of the street vendor, who remembers selling a balloon to the same man on the day of Elsie's disappearance. A surveillance team of beggars, who mark him with chalk, and eventually secure him after he takes refuge in an office building, pursues him.

It's a compelling feat of cinema, and the final sequences at the underworld court hearing are unforgettable. Peter Lorre, who would later find his way into American films, gives a brilliant performance. He displays an incredible array of emotions as he reveals, in a wonderful monologue, the psychotic urges he is incapable of controlling, and confesses to his compulsive murderous streak. The black-and-white cinematography is quite stunning, considering the era, and Lang does a great job incorporating mirrors and glass to reflect Beckert back on himself, to cleverly reveal expression. Beckert views himself as a normal human being, plagued by an illness, but Lang questions civil judgment, and whether even someone of his misdeed is worthy of a fair trial, or whether he should be executed for his sins. Censorship may have impacted Lang's desired conclusion here, though.

My Rating: 5 Stars

Best Films I Saw in February

I watched a total of 19 films in February, a bit less than in January.

New Releases at the Cinema: 127 Hours (2010), Hereafter (2010), Rabbit Hole (2010), Inside Job (2010), The Way Back (2010), The Green Hornet (2011)

Watched for the First Time (DVD): Days of Heaven (1978), Lolita (1997), Syriana (2005), Bronson (2008)

Re-watched: The Birds (1963), The Lord of the Ring's: The Two Towers (2002) The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003), Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), Ratatouille (2007), No Country for Old Men (2007), A Serious Man (2009), Zombieland (2009), Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Essential Viewing 

The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)

Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Peter Jackson, 2002)

The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003)

Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 2007)

No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)

A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009)

127 Hours (Danny Boyle, 2010)

Inside Job (Charles Ferguson, 2010)