In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • REVIEW: “The Kids Are All Right” (***1/2)

    Annette Bening and Julianne More in The Kids Are All RightBerlin International Film Festival

    A spry, sun-bleached and often rather sexy study of what makes a family in modern America, “The Kids Are All Right” breezes by so pleasurably it’s easy to forget what a daring and very necessary film it is. Gift-wrapping its smart sexual politics with kicky dialogue, bright visuals and a pleasingly messy tangle of relationships, Los Angeles-born auteur Lisa Cholodenko’s fourth (and finest) feature is her most mainstream to date, but makes a virtue of those concessions.

    Since its deservedly buzzy Sundance premiere, you’ve probably already heard “The Kids Are All Right” described ad nauseum as a lesbian – or perhaps more coyly, liberal – drama. With the film having been adopted by Focus Features, who recently had success with “Brokeback Mountain” and “Milk,” it seems likely the tag will stick, particularly if award season beckons.

    But such a label, however well-intentioned, does a disservice to Cholodenko’s admirable avoidance of social tract. Rather than hectoring its audience to accept its characters as normal, this film goes one better by doing just that, and not commenting on the matter any further.

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  • ‘Basterds’ art for Haiti

    And you thought there was nothing charitable about “Inglourious Basterds.” Tomorrow, L.A.’s Upper Playground Gallery, in conjuction with The Weinstein Company, will be hosting an exhibition of alternative poster art for the film from a range of contemporary artists. The posters will be sold in aid of Red Cross Haiti drive.

    With the noble stuff out the way, I can also add that some of the artwork is pretty damn cool. This one by Grotesk is my favorite; you can view the rest here.

    Inglourious Basterds poster design by Grotesk

    [Source: Upper Playground]

  • SHORT TAKE: “The Illusionist” (****)

    The IllusionistBerlin International Film Festival

    It took six days and an awful lot of films, but the Berlinale has finally turned up a masterpiece. Moreover, it’s a rare case of one of the fest’s most eagerly awaited titles managing to meet, and even subvert, expectations.

    “The Illusionist,” French animator Sylvain Chomet long-gestating follow-up the 2003 Oscar nominee “The Triplets of Belleville,” confirms a truly singular auteur sensibility, while revealing a more disciplined artist and storyteller within. A streamlined character study, less deliriously eccentric in tone and structure than his debut feature, “The Illusionist” nonetheless boasts an emotional heft that handsomely repays its creator’s restraint.

    Those who have been following the project will already know the reason for the newfound calm in Chomet’s quirk. “The Illusionist” is based on a previously unfilmed script by the late comic master Jacques Tati, and the film plays as a fascinating across-the-decades collaboration between two distinct voices (though given their shared preference for amusingly garbled dialogue, perhaps “distinct” isn’t the word) of French comedy: the tangling of Tati’s genial situational humor with Chomet’s more extravagant flights of fancy proves mutually enhancing.

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  • BERLIN: ‘Please Give,’ ‘Red Hill,’ ‘Submarino’

    Ryan Kwanten in Red HillFilm festivals have a curious way of either dulling one’s critical faculties or provoking them to an impolite degree. I almost never walk out of a screening under normal circumstances; at a festival, while compressing five-odd films into one day, it’s almost life-affirming to do so.

    Such was the case yesterday, halfway through “Caterpillar,” a Competition entry from widely admired Japanese veteran Koji Wakamatsu. An apparent Oshima knockoff combining catatonic narrative inertia with visual dinginess, it centers on a mute, limbless Sino-Japanese War vet rebuilding his relationship with his wife: “rebuilding his relationship” being a euphemism for working his way through the paraplegic Kama Sutra.

    After a sufficient number of po-faced sex scenes, interspersed with shots of cherry-blossom to indicate the passing of seasons — the film, it seems, was edited with a blunt axe — Tim turned to me and whimpered, “I can’t take it anymore.” We bailed and headed for “Gentlemen Broncos” instead; and you know now how that worked out.

    The film has its champions, mind. And I’m now convinced it will win something on Saturday just to spite me. After the cut, however, are three films I happily sat through in their entirety.

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  • The making of a surprise

    The Secret of KellsI think it’s fairly inarguable that this year’s most unexpected Oscar nomination was the deserved Best Animated Feature nod for “The Secret of Kells,” the Irish festival creeper that some journos even admitted to not having heard of. If you had your money on that one, you have my respect in addition to your fortune.

    But behind every Oscar surprise that nobody sees coming lies a lot of planning and calculation: this Wall Street Journal piece looks at how fledgling distributor GKIDS stealthily orchestrated the film’s nomination.

    Specializing in high-end family fare, GKIDS was founded a year ago by Eric Backman, with the objective of landing an Oscar nomination within two years. He’s now one year ahead of schedule, thanks to a passive campaign relying on the film itself to generate buzz.

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  • “Chevalier…”

    Jemaine Clement in Gentlemen BroncosThe film is history across the pond, but having just seen Jared Hess’s “Gentlemen Broncos” in the Generation strand of the Berlinale, I feel obliged to briefly counter the thoroughly undeserved critical and commercial kicking the film received back in fall 2009.

    Because I’m astonished to find Hess’s creatively chaotic stew of literature, movies-within-movies and vintage power balladry the most sweet-natured and most consistently hilarious comedy of last year.

    I was never a “Napoleon Dynamite” disciple. And in light of reviews even harsher than those for the dire “Nacho Libre,” it’s fair to say I wasn’t looking forward to Hess’s latest. Indeed, I wasn’t planning on seeing at all; I only ducked in to seek refuge from the embarrassing Competition entry I’d walked out of next door. (More on that later.)

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  • BERLIN: ‘Winter’s Bone,’ ‘Greenberg,’ ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’

    Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's BoneYesterday’s viewing roster just about had me double-checking whether I was at the right festival, as I was treated to a pair of Sundance hits, in addition to a brand-new Amerindie feature from a Sundance alumnus. The copious snow still smothering the sidewalks of Berlin only aided the comparison.

    Perhaps it was Valentine’s Day spirit making me more benign – apparently against the current of critical opinion, in the case of Noah Baumbach’s “Greenberg” – but all three films, moreover, afforded me pleasures of varying degrees. (And definitions: “pleasure” is not the most appropriate term for a film as severe as “Winter’s Bone.”)

    “WINTER’S BONE” (***1/2)

    In 2004, NYU film grad Debra Granik spun a student short into a ragged but confident debut feature, “Down to the Bone,” that landed her a Sundance award and kick-started the career of a sensational actress named Vera Farmiga. Perhaps you’ve heard of her.

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  • REVIEW: “Shutter Island” (**1/2)

    Shutter Island

    Berlin International Film Festival

    (EDIT: Star rating adjusted upon consideration.)

    To filch an aphorism from Mike Skinner, “Shutter Island” represents of continuation of Martin Scorsese’s decade-long quest to find the hardest way to make an easy living.

    If that sounds like a jab, it’s not. Since the self-amusing personal statements of “Kundun” and “Bringing Out the Dead” perplexed far more than they pleased, Scorsese has weaved over to the middle of the road, flirting with broad Oscar-bait and crowdpleasers (successfully marrying the two in “The Departed”) while playfully maintaining an auteur’s consistency of theme and aesthetic.

    It’s a tricky game to play, and when the elements align, it can work to smashing effect — as in “The Departed,” a nifty pop movie-movie winkingly intended as the prototypical “Scorsese film” that casual cinemagoers attributed to him, but that he’d never actually made.

    When they don’t, however, you get “Shutter Island,” a film awash with beauty and trademark stylistic flourishes, attached to a narrative that he never seems all that into. A near letter-faithful adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s pulpy source novel, itself something of a genre lark for the author, it surprises principally by offering more intrigue as a Scorsese picture than as an entertainment. As an artistic investigation of B-movie construction, it has all the impeccable craft, and a measure of the cinephile intelligence, of “The Departed” or “Cape Fear”; but a lot of the fun is missing.

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  • BERLIN: Arrivals and complications

    Shahrukh Khan in My Name is KhanOkay, so that was a long silence. I apologize. But in addition to the usual trials of settling in, my first day at the Berlinale threw up some added obstacles that made for a day that was curiously both hectic and thin on matters worth reporting.

    Frankly, one needs an entire day just to process the festival’s labyrinthine programme, with its convoluted bylaws of which films in which strands can be viewed by which press at what time. In what is surely the only time Nancy Meyers will prompt my conversation at the Berlinale, it’s complicated.

    By the time I had managed to get my proverbial shit together, a night on the tiles in the company of the Telegraph’s Tim Robey was a far more inviting option than finding a free spot on the carpet of the festival’s wi-fi lounge. (A tourist’s hat tip to the rather awesome Stagger Lee cocktail lounge near Nollendorfplatz.) So here we are — a little better organized this morning, if a lot worse for wear.

    I have just come out of the press screening of “Shutter Island” — to which I shall dedicate a full review later today — and have a little under an hour the squeeze in a precis of yesterday’s activity before heading into Thomas Vinterberg’s “Submarino” this afternoon.

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  • Berlin bound

    In a couple of hours, I’ll be packing my bags, donning my warmest and most ridiculous-looking puffa jacket and catching a crack-of-dawn flight to the German capital. The occasion, of course: the 60th Berlin International Film Festival.

    I’ve been to Berlin before — and was thoroughly enamored of it — though this will be my first experience of the festival, and I’m not a little intrigued. Alongside Cannes and Venice, the Berlinale essentially completes the holy European festival trinity, but its position in the calendar gives it a rather different profile from its glitzier sisters.

    Where Cannes hogs the lofty auteur names and Venice always nabs a couple of big fall awards hopefuls, Berlin is a refuge for smaller fare from up-and-coming filmmakers, peppered with the occasional sexy Hollywood premiere.

    That’s not to say that the festival doesn’t launch substantial works. Two of this year’s Oscar nominees, “The Messenger” and “The Milk of Sorrow,” began their awards trails with wins at Berlin a year ago, while the 2008 competition turned up the actressy trifecta of “Happy-Go-Lucky,” “I’ve Loved You So Long” and “Julia.” Berlin hits have to ride their buzz for longer than those at Cannes, but there are almost always a couple that quietly stay the course.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The crafts of ‘Bright Star’

    Ben Wishaw and Abbie Cornish in Bright StarIt’s not every year that my biggest cheer on Oscar nomination morning comes in the technical categories, but such was the case last week when Janet Patterson’s name showed up in the Best Costume Design lineup.

    Patterson’s inclusion (following a senseless Guild snub) is gratifying not merely as recognition for her tangibly textured, richly story-serving threads in “Bright Star,” but as a representation of one of 2009’s most immaculately integrated – and under-rewarded – technical ensembles.

    Jane Campion’s John Keats biopic derives its fresh, fragile romanticism as much from writing and performance as the combined efforts of Patterson, cinematographer Greig Fraser and composer Mark Bradshaw. Their work has prompted countless critics’ punning on Keats’s “a thing of beauty is a joy forever” chestnut, but sometimes the most obvious praise is the most appropriate.

    For Fraser and Bradshaw, “Bright Star” represents their first experience on a Campion feature, having previously collaborated with the New Zealander on a pair of short films, “The Water Diary” and “The Lady Bug.” For Patterson, however, the film extends a collaboration with the filmmaker that dates back to Campion’s 1993 breakthrough “The Piano,” and has yielded previous Oscar nominations for both that film and 1996’s “The Portrait of a Lady.”

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  • INTERVIEW: Jacques Audiard

    Jacques Audiard at the Cannes premiere of A ProphetAs pundits continue to posit art-versus-genre arguments around the 10 titles vying for Best Picture, the finest film to be nominated in any category at this year’s Academy Awards is to be found a little further down the list – and it’s one that would bridge the discussion rather nicely.

    Nominated last week for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and bedecked with numerous accolades besides, Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet,” is a brazen, brilliant marriage of pulp, prestige and politics.

    A bloody prison drama that phrases intricate social analysis in the language of gangster cinema at its most hardboiled, it’s Audiard’s beefiest excursion yet into the noir territory that he visited in his last two films, lean thrillers “Read My Lips” and “The Beat That My Heart Skipped.”

    Critics have been quick to make comparisons to assorted American genre masters since the film’s Cannes premiere nine months ago , with “GoodFellas” and even “The Godfather” routinely surfacing in discussions around the film. But while Audiard acknowledges his kinship to U.S. cinema – this is a man, after all, whose last feature was a remake of a 1978 James Toback thriller – he takes such talk with a healthy pinch of salt.

    “People keep saying, oh, it’s like Scorsese, or it’s like Coppola, and of course that’s very flattering,” the native Parisian says over the phone, via the translation (and occasional embellishment) of his co-writer Thomas Bidegain.

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  • Babes in arms

    We pointed you to Mark Harris’s superb examination of the Oscar campaign trail in a round-up, but if you missed it … well, don’t. If “Pictures at a Revolution” didn’t already make the case, this article reminds me that we’re due an updated equivalent of Mason Wiley and Damien Bona’s totemic “Inside Oscar” — and Harris is the man for the job.

    Anyway, as icing on the cake, the article is accompanied by a wonderful photographic portfolio by Brigitte Lacombe. There’s a portrait of Marion Cotillard in there that’s worthy of Cecil Beaton, but this shot of “Precious” director Lee Daniels with young Quishay Powell (who plays the unfortunately-named Mongo in the film) is the snap of the season for me.

    Quishay Powell and Lee Daniels

  • Oscilloscope nabs Sendak doc

    Maurice SendakOne of my smaller disappointments of last week’s Oscar nominations was the failure of Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs’s lovely “Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak” to secure a nod in the documentary short category. (You might remembert Kris’s enthusiastic endorsement of the film back in October.)

    Admittedly, I have not seen the five films that did make the cut — chances are they’re all highly worthy. But the Sendak short was a captivating portrait of a truly singular artist, simple in construction but touched by its subject’s one creative energy. Moreover, a nomination would have been a nice way for the Academy to indirectly recognize Jonze’s extraordinary work on “Where the Wild Things Are,” recipent of one of the most undeserved ducks of awards season.

    Anyway, spilt milk and all that. But I’m pleased to report that one of my favorite new indie outfits, Oscilloscope Laboratories, has acquired the short, and will be releasing it on DVD to coincide with the DVD release of “Where the Wild Things Are.”

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  • Nothing good can come of this

    I tend to avoid reporting on projects at the pre-production stage, since they so often don’t pan out — if they were ever more than rumors to begin with. But it’s for that very reason that I bring this to your attention: if I mention it, that’ll hopefully put the hex on it ever happening. From the Guardian:

    Russell Crowe looks set to take a leading role in A Star Is Born, a remake of the classic Hollywood melodrama about a fading, drunken superstar who finds himself eclipsed by a younger model. The former Gladiator star is reportedly in talks to appear alongside Beyoncé in the Warner Bros production.

    Not horrific enough for you? Well, Nick Cassavetes (“My Sister’s Keeper,” “John Q,” “The Notebook”) is reportedly in the director’s chair. Uh, bring it on.

  • INTERVIEW: ‘Red Riding: 1974’ director Julian Jarrold

    Julian JarroldNearly a year after they first landed on UK television screens, the three feature-length films that comprise the “Red Riding” trilogy have reached American audiences – and in the theatrical environment where they belong, no less.

    IFC is marketing and distributing “Red Riding,” an adaptation of David Peace’s decade-spanning quartet of crime novels inspired by the real-life Yorkshire Ripper murders, as a single theatrical event. The truth, however, is that these are three very distinct, even self-standing, works from three dissimilar directors: Julian Jarrold, James Marsh and Anand Tucker.

    Where “Man on Wire” director Marsh’s documentary chops are evident in a film that takes on the nuts and bolts of police corruption, and Tucker (“Hilary and Jackie”) takes a straightforward character-based approach to tie up loose ends, Jarrold’s film, the opener, is the most boldly stylized of the three.

    Following young journalist Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) as he probes the disappearance of a young girl and becomes ill-advisedly involved with her grieving mother (Rebecca Hall), the film consciously fuses the languages of film noir and social realism to striking effect.

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  • ‘Fish Tank’ tops at Evening Standard awards

    Katie Jarvis in Fish TankVoted on by a handful of London critics (including IC friend Tim Robey), the Evening Standard Film Awards aren’t the glitiziest of honors, but they always make admirably singular choices. Celebrating the best in British film and talent, they often highlight names and titles below the radar of even the British Independent Film Awards.

    As if that wasn’t commendable enough, they earned the distinction last year of being the sole awards body to give Tilda Swinton a Best Actress award for “Julia.”

    At tonight’s ceremony, meanwhile, they continued to earn my goodwill as their top prize went to Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank,” beating Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” in the process.

    In something of an upset, Carey Mulligan lost Best Actress to “Nowhere Boy” star Anne-Marie Duff, while BAFTA nominee Andy Serkis took Best Actor for the Ian Dury biopic “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.” The night’s winners also included two Oscar contenders: the screenwriting team behind “In the Loop,” and Barry Ackroyd for “The Hurt Locker.” Full list of winners and nominees after the cut.

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  • Julian Fellowes on the rise of Carey Mulligan

    Carey MulliganRemember when Oscar pundits were calling this year’s Best Actress race a coin-toss between Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep? It was a dispiritingly long time ago. With the unexpected explosion of “The Blind Side” arose an industry narrative about the unprecedented box-office muscle of middle-aged female stars, and awards season adjusted accordingly — making this one of the rare Oscars years where ingenues find themselves on the outside looking in.

    Not that Mulligan has too much to be upset about: an Oscar nod for one’s first leading role is nothing to sneeze at, and with prominent and/or prestige projects like “Never Let Me Go” and  “Wall Street 2” on her 2010 slate, the “next big thing” talk can continue unabated. (And without the pressure that accompanies an Oscar win, at that.)

    The latest contributor to this conversation is Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes (“Gosford Park”), who cheers the actress’s Oscar nomination with a rather touching personal tribute in the Daily Telegraph. (If the near-miss of Emily Blunt for the Fellowes-scripted “The Young Victoria” dampened his mood, he doesn’t mention it.)

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