The Place Beyond the Pines

The Place Beyond the Pines (2013)

Rotten Tomatoes: 80%

Director: Derek Cianfrance

Screenwriter: Derek Cianfrance, Ben Coccio, Darius Marder

The Place Beyond the Pines is a breathtakingly original and daring film. Starring two of Hollywood's hottest actors, Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, this film aims for the sky in its attempt of a modern Greek tragedy, and falls just short, let down slightly by its second half. The opening credits sequence is a captivating piece of cinematic magic, as we follow Luke Glanton (Gosling), a motorbike stuntman as he threads his way through a fairground, and for the first half an hour the film is of such breathtaking intensity that it could have been really, really great. Gosling, the film's protagonist for the first half puts in a magnificently brooding performance as he resorts to robbing banks to pay for his newborn son. The end of this segment of the film is almost immediately obvious from the start, with the church music playing throughout giving it an increasingly ominous feel. 

Halfway through the film, we switch protagonists completely, a move almost never taken in mainstream cinema, and Bradley Cooper arrives on the scene as Avery Cross, a cop who suppresses his feelings of guilt at a shooting he made as he climbs higher and higher up the police ranks, betraying his friends in the service. This change doesn't quite come off as smoothly as the film would like it to, although there is a significant connection between the two characters that I won't reveal. After the intensity of the first half the second half feels oddly slack, and Cooper puts in a very solid performance, but pales in comparison to Gosling.

The film takes place across three segments, and the third one, wrapping the film up, is a fascinating end to an almost Shakespearean tragedy. We jump fifteen years into the future, to the two main characters children as teens, a daring concept and step that falters slightly in its execution. The focus of the audience is crucial for a film, and the film slightly lets it focus slip, while the characters at times feel like they represent concepts, making decisions because the plot requires them to, but not as real people. The supporting cast, especially Eva Mendes as the mother of Gosling's child are also fantastic, and although the film stumbles at times in its execution of the second half, it is still fascinating to watch and a dazzlingly inventive piece of cinema about greed and corruption.

4/5 Stars

The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Rotten Tomatoes 92%
Empire 301 (2014): #282
Director: Wes Anderson
Screenwriter: Wes Anderson

The Grand Budapest Hotel, like the icing cakes made in it, is exquisitely composed, beautiful to look at and has a delicious flavour to it. Wes Anderson has crafted a lovely piece and although it doesn't quite reach Moonrise Kingdom in scope and sincerity, it is still lovely to sample and to once again take a dip into the unique mind of Anderson. 

The ensemble and star-studded cast all turn in very solid performances, but Ralph Fiennes as Monsieur Gustave H, the enigmatic concierge holds the whole film together, with an exceptionally comical and exaggerated performance. As he and his understudy Zero (Tony Revolori) get dragged into a criminal underworld, he manages to maintain the farcical aspects of the film perfectly without going overboard. Willem Dafoe is also an exceptionally menacing and sinister presence as a cold-blooded assassin.

Told in the style of a dream the film peels back layer after layer of the story. A teenage girl reads a book by an elderly author (Tom Wilkinson) who describes the experience of his younger self (Jude Law) as he meets the mysterious owner of the hotel (F. Murray Abraham) and is told of his experiences. This gives the film a surreal quality, perpetuated by it's stunningly inventive and fresh cinematography that is unlike anything before. It also however, makes the film feel a little impersonal and it feels at times like the film aims to be admired but not loved.

That said, in places it is incredibly funny, with most of the comedy centering around Ralph Fiennes, despite the film's protagonist being Zero who is played by relatively inexperienced and young actor Tony Revolori, whose unremitting decency and willingness to go along with M. Gustave stops the film from descending into some kind of over the top parody.

4/5 Stars

A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Rotten Tomatoes: 89%
Empire 500 (2008): #37
Empire 301 (2014): #54
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Screenwriter: Stanley Kubrick

So much has been written about this film, that it feels somehow churlish to give it a rating, as if it has transcended good or bad. Watching A Clockwork Orange is not an enjoyable experience, and Kubrick purposefully ups the level of violence and sexual imagery at almost every opportunity to shock the watcher. Following the ultra-violent Alex (Malcom McDowell) as he is forced to relinquish immoral actions and thoughts by the government, A Clockwork Orange attempts to ask several important questions about the nature of society, and partly succeeds.

Horrible yet compelling, Alex is a fantastic character, played to perfection by McDowell. Despite being a deeply violent and horrible person, it is very difficult not to feel some twinge of sympathy for him at some point in his journey, as society turns and experiments on him. There are also some fantastic shots here, that seize your attention, especially the opening scene, which is a work only of pure genius. The Reservoir Dogs style scene also feels just incredibly right, and makes you gasp in exactly the right way. The music is also judged perfectly in most places.

This is not however, a five star film. In my opinion, the movie slightly loses itself halfway through, following the novel despite not having the exact same themes as the novel. Even this movie could I suspect have benefited from losing five minutes at some point. The world that this film creates also doesn't quite work, and the fashions and decorations used don't come together to create a consistent picture. The different use of colour is clearly something to be noted in people's clothes but for me it never really worked.

Kubrick also differs from the novel being adapted by leaving out the final cathartic chapter, which provides at least a glimmer of hope to the film, as an older Alex loses his love for violence and wants to settle down. It feels therefore that one of the two key themes of the book has been left out, the idea of violence being a permanent, natural and timeless part of growing up and society, and this is only slightly addressed in a scene where Alex reads the Bible and imagines himself as a Roman crucifying Jesus. No reason at all is therefore offered for the root cause of Alex's violence, not even that it is just the way he is and a part of adolescence, as put forward by the novel

A masterpiece, but a confused one

4/5 stars

Jerry Maguire

Jerry Maguire (1996)
Empire 500 (2008): #420
Empire 301 (2014): Left Out
Rotten Tomatoes: 85%
Director: Cameron Crowe
Screenwriter: Cameron Crowe

Before watching this film, I had only seen one Cameron Crowe film, the brilliant Almost Famous which remains one of my favourites. So my expectations as I pressed play were perhaps unfairly high. There are one or two fantastic moments in this film, and the cast are outstanding across the board, but ultimately it doesn't feel tight enough and at least for me, something doesn't quite hit the mark.

It is still a very good film, expertly acted by everyone, especially the supporting roles of Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger) who provides the film with some much needed emotional depth and Rod Tidwell, (for which Cuba Gooding Jr. won an Academy Award) as the football player who sticks with Jerry Maguire when seemingly everything is lost for him, and the emotional payoff at the end of the film for all three of them is genuinely stirring. As we follow Jerry Maguire, who gets sacked from his high-paying job as a sports agent for the sin of writing a mission statement about the lack of honesty or respect in his business, losing everything besides his one client and one assistant, we become personally attached to him, due in no small part to the effort of Tom Cruise, who stays on just the right side of smarmy and know-it-all to be sympathetic. The film also avoids an easy cliché, shown especially in the romance between Jerry and Dorothy.

However, the film feels at times a bit too flabby and contain some meaningless characters. Chief among them is the babysitter of Dorothy's son who despite being completely meaningless to the advancement of the plot is given a lot of screen time, and doesn't add anything at all to the overall experience of the film. The long film also occasionally meanders a bit too much at certain points. A very good film, but in my opinion not quite as good as Almost Famous, which is a great movie.

4/5 Stars