'Still Alice' Review

50/50, Dallas Buyers Club, The Theory of Everything; three films where the lead character is faced with disease. Although very different they are reminiscent of each other in that the afflicted characters are not only trying to conquer their biological afflictions (and in the case of the second film listed, the prejudice that comes with the disease) for as long as they can but they are also trying to remain human beings, striving through or yearning for everyday professional and social tasks so as to not let the disease become their domineering characteristic. For Still Alice this sentiment rings true. In Still Alice Julianne Moore plays Alice Howland, a Columbia University linguistics professor afflicted with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Throughout the film her condition worsens and she becomes more dependent on her husband John (Alec Baldwin) and the rest of her family, her intellect as opposed to her instinct and memory and even on technology as she tries to hold onto her identity.

The film is a slow burner; a long fuse that ignites from melancholy into heavy drama. There are moments where this works extremely well. We see Alice’s triumphs offset by reality and her content expression fall into a tones of anxiety, panic and despair. For this congratulations must be given to directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, the vision of cinematographer Denis Lenoir and Julianne Moore’s ability to navigate the Alice’s struggles. Glatzer, Westmoreland and Lenoir are able to pick the right shots at the right time, haze out background when Alice can no longer comprehend her environment and build up a tension that when released hits you with the reality of Alice’s situation like a hammer. This isn’t always the case. Sometimes the fuse is met with a fizzle and there is no great impact. Thankfully this is not the case for the majority of the picture.

Although direction and cinematography make for a vivid and emotionally heightened film, the performances are what elevate Still Alice. Julianne Moore is astounding as Alice. We see her intelligence, her perseverance and doggedness as well as her failures in a complete performance in which Moore’s elegance and subtlety make for a moving transformation as Alice’s condition worsens. Kristen Stewart turns in an effective performance as Alice’s daughter Lydia, an actress on the West Coast. Caring but for the most part absent, Stewart’s chemistry with Moore can be grasped whether they’re in the same room discussing Alice’s condition whilst preparing a meal or on the phone or skype. Alec Baldwin shows himself to be one of America’s most distinguished actors with a winning performance as Alice’s husband John, illustrating that Alzheimer’s takes its toll on everyone involved. It is Moore that shines the brightest however. Even when the dynamic of the Howland family sometimes seems unrealistic and an overused type of shot is combined with an overused type motif from composer Ilan Eshkeri, Moore’s performance of great transitions elevates the film to something stellar. This really is Alice’s film. This is her trying to hold onto everything she loves. Work, education, language and family. At the end of the film, when Alice is under the constant care of her daughter and cannot comprehend wholly the world around her, it is Alice’s love of things that rings true. She is Alice, the disease cannot change her humanity.

7/10

'Inherent Vice' Review

The year 1970: Hendrix is dead, it has been a year since the murder of Meridith Hunter at Altamont Speedway and the war in Vietnam has been raging for 15 years. The hippy generation’s want for worldwide peace and love has now been revealed to be a drug-induced pipedream and is collapsing in on itself due to its inherent vice. Neo-Nazism is on the rise and the Black Panther Party and Communism reveal extremism at both ends of the political spectrum. Crime is up and illegal drug cartels are making addicts to create a market. And out of this fog of pessimism, paranoia and hemp smoke comes Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), a dope-head private investigator trying to track down his ex-girlfriend and her billionaire boyfriend, both of whom have disappeared. He’s lost for a lot of his journey, as are we. In Inherent Vice there is much confusion. As always, the great Paul Thomas Anderson asks the upmost of his audience. Unlike the sparseness of There Will Blood and The Master, Inherent Vice is stuffed with plot points and characters that your mind has to paste together. This is not to say that Inherent Vice is poorly crafted. The narrative is as hazy as it wants to be. The images on screen are as paranoid and vivid as Anderson wants them to be. The laughs (mostly from Josh Brolin’s wonderfully absurd Detective Christian F. ‘Bigfoot’ Bjornson) are as hearty as the film intends and the thrills and plot reveals are as striking as to offset the comedy. The crime drama has well and truly met the stoner comedy in Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel. This may seem like a pointless observation due to the aforementioned source material but there is an extremely novel-like feel to the film adaptation. The crime narrative unfolds as a great crime novel should do whilst the tone is strikingly modernist, akin to Conrad or Woolf. This is a hazy and confused film that portrays a hazy and confused time. At the same time, Anderson’s superb direction and use of 35mm fills the film with a nostalgia for a time that feels centuries in the past, not a few years just been.

Underneath the haze there is real heart though. Phoenix’s Doc is the distant cousin of Jeff ‘the Dude’ Lebowski, a kind man with little greed in him. After the film has ended, after the haze has cleared, all we have left is a man who wants his love back in his life. He wants the past. He wants a time before billionaires and a drug cartel known as the ‘Golden Fang’ were running the show. We have Coy Harlingen (Owen Wilson), a former communist and current police informant who just wants to return to his wife and daughter. These are simple and pure plotlines that lovingly shine through. It is a hard time for sentiment and hopes in a time where political and social unrest, drugs and crime are rife. The film knows this. Greed breeds more efficiently than love in this environment. This is not to say that love cannot survive though. Fortunately, the film knows this as well.

8.5/10

Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs: 'American Sniper' Review

"Stupid analysis": this is the response Clint Eastwood has made to many critics who regard his latest effort American Sniper as a Pro-War on Terror polemic and a piece of nationalist propaganda. To call this interpretation of American Sniper an act of stupidity is a bit strong, rather more an act of misinterpretation. There is indeed a lot of imagery in American Sniper that backs up this interpretation. Flag-waving and patriotic sensibility is indeed there. But to call the film a polemic in this right is a bit strong. The director does show the horrors of war and what the soldier must go through to regain his humanity. The film does exhibit some anti-war sentiment as well but this does seem rather fleeting and although I do not interpret the film as pro-war polemic I can see how some have when it is taken at face value. That is not to say that Mr Eastwood doesn't have anything to answer for morally. There are patches in American Sniper that do feel incredibly uncomfortable. However, there is one quality of American Sniper that Clint Eastwood does have to answer for above all else: the fact that American Sniper is incredibly dull.

Usually this is where I would hash out a brief synopsis of the film but since there has been so much controversy surrounding the movie I feel there is little point. Still, for those who have been living under a rock, I will iterate that American Sniper is the story of US Navy SEAL and record-holding sniper Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) and several of his tours of duty in Iraq. During the tours we see Kyle break the record for longest confirmed kill in US military history, take out enemies from rooftops and develop relationships with other soldiers that I hope were more meaningful in reality that they were portrayed in this film. The film is equally as concerned with Kyle's home life with his wife Taya Renae Kyle (Sienna Miller) and Chris's inability to adjust back to civilian life. 

Firstly, I would like to iterate that I do not feel that this film is simply a shallow celebration of a killer. Chris Kyle was a killer, no doubt. He shot people from rooftops and some of these people were women and children, people he believed could bring harm to his fellow soldiers. As Kyle's father relays in the film's early stages, there are three types of people: sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. Kyle sees himself as the sheepdog, protecting the sheep. One of my problems with American Sniper is that it doesn't raise one question: what happened when Kyle got it wrong? What happened when he accidentally killed a sheep instead of a wolf? A lot of the film also focuses on the one-on-one conflict between Kyle and an opposing Iraqi sniper. The Iraqi sniper also is a skilled marksman. The Iraqi sniper also kills enemies from rooftops. What is the only difference is that this marksman is not portrayed as someone who is simply looking out for his allies. He is the shallow killer of the film, not Kyle. This is what is most disappointing. Although these two adversaries are not totally dissimilar in their duties, Kyle appears to be the hero and the opposing sniper the enemy. This is no doubt the appropriate mindset for the American soldier but this mindset is so stubbornly inflicted on the audience that is becomes extremely uncomfortable to watch. Whether this was the film's intention or not, the film forces you to adopt this mindset. I am aware that the characters were forced to see the enemy as subhuman but this could have been illustrated whilst still reminding the audience that the enemy is human. This is one of the reasons American Sniper seems to drag. This one-dimensional tone that wears thin after a while. This is wholly reflected in the characterisation of Chris Kyle. He is a sheepdog. This is all he is. He is constantly trying to look after others who aren't as strong as he is. This is somewhat of a shallow metaphor that becomes disinteresting and then tiresome. Bradley Cooper gives a solid performance. It's subdued, steady and fierce as opposed to the fast-talking, off-the-wall performances we have come to expect from Cooper but even this can't save Kyle from becoming disinteresting. This in turn makes the Kyle's relationships disinteresting. When a soldier dies it doesn't hit you. You're left trying to remember what their name was and even when their name is said you are left trying to remember where they even came into the film and who they were. In the end, the character list could have just read Chris Kyle, Wife, children, American Soldier 1, Soldier 2, Soldier 3, bad guys, main bad guy that is strikingly similar to Chris Kyle. There is very little character to the film in general with scenes that could have been recycled from countless other war dramas. For all the controversy, I really wish that American Sniper made me feel something. Anger, admiration, something more than the annoyance of spending my money.


3/10

Oscar Nominations Reaction

The Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been honouring the best in cinema since the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1921. Although I cannot be resolute in my sentiment, I'm sure the Academy has been failing to do this for just as long. There are always decisions that people find perplexing; snubs and inclusions that leave us fretting over the new entries in the Wikipedia articles 'The Academy Award for Best Actor', 'The Academy Award for Best Director' and the most prestigious prize of them all, 'The Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing'. 

As was expected, the announcement of the nominations for the 87th Academy Awards has provoked some head-scratching amongst some members of the movie-loving community and some outrage amongst others. I like to place myself in the middle of these two factions; rather more perplexed with what I disagree with and mildly contented with what I find acceptable.

Jake Gyllenhaal: Snub of the Decade So Far?

This one really is a shocker. After receiving SAG, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations, Jake Gyllenhaal looked like he was certain for an Oscar nod for his portrayal of sociopathic video journalist Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler. It seems as though Bradley Cooper's Academy-friendly performance as decorated navy SEAL marksman Chris Kyle in American Sniper has usurped Gyllenhaal's wonderfully realised character. Now, although appreciative of the subdued nature of Cooper's performance I am still baffled at his inclusion over Gyllenhaal. Although getting a lot of Oscar buzz, in my opinion this can also be said for Eddie Redmayne's somewhat skin-deep portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. 

However, are the Academy Moving in the Right Direction?

Apologies for the pun ladies and gents.

In all seriousness, with the exception of Best Original Screenplay, I think the directorial nominations make up the most solid category of this year's nominations. Whilst Richard Linklater (Boyhood) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman) were always expected to get nominations, the inclusion of Bennett Miller for Foxcatcher was an extremely pleasant surprise. Although winning an award for direction at Cannes, his snubbing in both Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations left his prospects at an Oscar nod unlikely. 

It also seems that the Academy has finally gotten over itself and decided to embrace the vibrant and ultra-stylised film-making of Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel). Often derided by some as suffocating due to his attention to detail, Anderson has finally received his first nomination for directing after a nomination for writing The Royal Tenenbaums more than a decade ago. 

No Best Picture nomination for Foxcatcher

If I had to pick a film that met all my expectations in the best way possible this year then it would be Bennett Miller's vivid look into the male psyche, Foxcatcher. Although brilliantly acted and elegantly directed with a sparse darkness that did justice to the crime that inspired the film, the Academy felt Foxcatcher wasn't worthy of a Best Picture nomination whilst giving it nominations for Best Director (Bennett Miller), Best Actor (Steve Carrel), Best Supporting Actor (Mark Ruffalo), Best Original Screenplay (E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman) and Best Hair and Makeup. Clearly the Academy did not see Foxcatcher as the sum of its parts. 

Although not completely shocking, I was disappointed Channing Tatum was not nominated alongside his co-star Mark Ruffalo for his naturalistic and visceral performance as Mark Schultz. I know this may seem like blasphemy but it was these two qualities that reminded me of Robert De Niro's Oscar-winning turn as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull.

Strong Year for Best Original Screenplay 

It's pretty rare that the Academy get it this right and it's quite surprising that they've acknowledged the qualities that make these films such a joy. The over-the-top nature of The Grand Budapest Hotel, Richard Linklater's knack for parlance in Boyhood, the chaotic frenzy that is Birdman and Foxcatcher's and Nightcrawler's darkness and brooding. 

The Lego Movie: Not so Awesome

Riotously entertaining, earnestly voice-acted and featuring some of the most unique animation of the 21st century but not nominated for Best Animated Feature? That's right, The Lego Movie was snubbed in favour of titles such as How to Train Your Dragon 2, Boxtrolls and Big Hero 6.  

However, the Academy did choose to give 'Everything Is Awesome' a nomination for Best Song. Seeing as the song is intentionally generic, the Academy either appreciates the song's satirical nature or the Academy clearly has no sense of irony. 

The First Time Anyone Was Ever Shocked Over the Best Editing Nominations

Ok, it's fair to say that the technical awards are a bit of an oddity to the general public. They're the strange awards given to the people we've never heard of before the big name stars get their turn at their cringe-worthy speeches. A kind of warm-up act. However, if I was Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione, I would be a bit pissed.


"Who?" you ask. It is understandable if you do not recognise the names of the editors of Birdman. What is not understandable is that their beautiful quasi one-take editing that made Birdman the fluid masterpiece was not recognised by the Academy.