You Can Count On Me (2000)

This was recommended to me eons ago by my colleague but it has only just arrived via my LoveFilm account. So, was my colleague right to endorse this understated Americana drama?

In short, definitely. This is a brilliant film, which I enjoyed from start to finish. Even Matthew Broderick didn't manage to ruin it for me and was actually quite good. He even made me laugh out loud through his delivery of a line. Wow. This augers well for a good year in film in 2009.

You Can Count on Me focuses on the life of Sammy Prescott (the once again stunning Laura Linney), who raises young son Rudy (Rory Culkin) on her own. Following the death of Sammy's parents in a car accident when they were very young, the family has disintegrated. But an opportunity for redemption arrives when down-on-his-luck younger brother, the dreamy and disaffected Terry, comes to visit.

Films like this live and die on the quality of their performances, being insular, quiet, understated and totally focused on story and relationships. The leads do not let director Kenneth Lonnergan down one bit.

Is Linney the greatest actress performing in Hollywood today? This website would seem to suggest yes, as she is one of the few performers who seems to elicit the same response of adoration from us both, yet she is still relatively unknown. Linney has generally chosen indie flicks to showcase her vast talents and she still perhaps awaits that genuine breakout movie, which it seemed for a while the Truman Show would be. Perhaps it is a good thing that she hasn't 'broken out' and continues to make stunning films like this and 2007's Jindabyne (although my colleague was not as blown away by her performance there as I was). Linney is, again, the best thing in this and that is no mean feat, given the other performances, especially Ruffalo's. Her range and emotional depth is perfectly showcased in the love Sammy clearly has for her troubled younger brother and Linney invests the character with multiple dimensions of being, thought, emotion and behaviour. The character lives and this means the film gasps and breathes deeply the emotional wilds and vistas it inhabits. Linney is, like a true virtuoso, note and tone perfect throughout.

Ruffalo is great as well, brilliantly awkward, funny and distant as a character who clearly carries a lot more with him than he is ever willing to let on. He does some stupid things, but they always feel human and very real and the audience is sympathetically tied to his fate. Rory Culkin, too, clearly got all the acting talents in his family and he is now beginning to break out into the mainstream after measured performances in this and Signs. And as I say, even Matthew Broderick, who I dislike immensely as an actor and consistently fail to understand how he still gets acting jobs, is decent in this, only on occasion lapsing into his normal inconsistency and poor delivery.

This is well worth an hour and a half of anyone's time, imbued in the life and struggle of an interesting, mostly charming and engaging family. The characters are neatly drawn, lively and, crucially, human and the performers have the requisite talents to live up to them. Add this to your LoveFilm wishlist or seek it out at your local video store. Lovely.

A-

Quick Notes

Two feel good films that are getting some attention as the critics start handing out their end of year prizes. Having much in common, both are independent films, one US the other UK, featuring strong lead performances and both are easily worth your time and money.

The Visitor

Thomas McCarthy's The Visitor stars Richard Jenkins in a rare leading role and after this one can only hope that more follow for he is wonderful. The title might very well refer to Richard Jenkins' character Walter - a stranger to his own NY home - he spends all his time in Connecticut trying to appear as busy as possible when in fact he does very little. It might be Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), the illegal immigrant he discovers living in his apartment when he makes a rare return to New York for a conference. It may also be Tarek's mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass), who arrives in New York when she does not hear from her son for a few of days. All 3 touch each other's lives significantly and unexpectedly.

Impeccably acted by all, but especially Jenkins and Sleiman, the former deserves all the awards notice he is getting. I had a smile on my face for large chunks of the running time and, whilst the film certainly ha a point to make about the American immigration system, it by no means batters you over the head with it. It is a warm, funny, even touching film that invites you to spend 90-odd minutes with some wonderful characters, and that can never be a bad thing.

A-

Happy-Go-Lucky

Happy-Go-Lucky is Mike Leigh's latest, and whilst it doesn't veer away from his usual low budget take on the working class trappings, it does present a far happier portrayal of British life than much of his work. I've enjoyed Leigh most when he has explored subject matters outside his comfort zone - Topsy-Turvy being, in my eyes, easily his best work. Well Happy-Go-Lucky is also a little outside his comfort zone and features a wonderful Sally Hawkins as Poppy, who's character biography can be accurately synopsised by reading the title of the film. Quite unlike any character Leigh has written before, indeed quite unlike any character I have ever seen on screen before, Poppy is an infectious, inexorably delighted 30 year old who can laugh at anything, including severe back pain, make jokes out of the smallest of situations and who has a unwaveringly sunny outlook on life.

Some have found her carefree character irritating and I confess 5 minutes in I was itching for the off button, but that was more to do with there being five such individuals in the room together - an assault on anyone's senses. Poppy on her own though is pretty great and is highly enjoyable to watch especially when playing opposite her perfect counterfoil Scott, who is the antithesis of Poppy. Uptight, highly-strung and angry, Scott has the unenviable task of teaching Poppy how to drive - his exasperation providing frequent comic highlights.

There's no plot to speak of, Leigh, like McCarthy, has invited you to spend some time with some wonderful characters - in this case Poppy and Scott. Played to perfection, Marsan has sadly been overlooked thus far in the end of year awards circuit but Hawkins is racking up wins and nominations like there's no tomorrow. An Oscar nod is likely, and would be well deserved.

Just one minus point - the score is woeful. Everything else is great though. I really would love to see Mike Leigh get $100 million to spend on a movie one of these days. Until then I'll continue to enjoy great work such as this.

B+

Your 2008 Oscar Host

Changeling

Apparently Hollywood's highest paid actress, Angelina Jolie certainly has a decent amount of range - at least in the genre of films she appears in. Happy to appeal to the young testosterone juiced males in ludicrous (although quite fun) action heavy films like Wanted, she also makes sure she appears in enough films with higher pretensions in order to be taken seriously as a - well - serious actress. Very few actors have such a successful dual career - a number jump from one camp to the other for the odd film, but generally appear happier in the dumb popcorn stuff or the not so dumb award bait stuff and rarely both.

To date her more serious roles have yielded just one Oscar nomination and that was back in 2000 for Girl Interrupted - a role she went on to win for. A Mighty Heart was supposed to change that last year but Oscar looked away when everyone else at least saw fit to nominate her. This year though a nomination looks even likelier than it did this time 12 months ago, for Jolie has landed a role apparently highly sought after; Christine Collins - a woman whose son disappears one day when she takes on an extra shift at work, triggering a 5 months man hunt for her lost child. After an exhaustive search the LAPD, desperate to receive some good press, announce that they have found her son when in actual fact the boy they found is someone she's never met in her life. Worse, they refuse to acknowledge their mistake once they "reunite" mother and son and forcefully suggest Collins should take the boy home to "try him out" for a few weeks.

This was a time when the police had an incredible amount of power but very rarely used it wisely. Corruption was rife and mistreatment commonplace. Incredibly the police department didn't even require a medical examination to have someone (almost exclusively a female) incarcerated for mental illness. This was the 20s and women were largely second class citizens. At work Collins is told her manager had to lay his job on the line to get her promoted to shift supervisor - his bosses telling him women couldn't do the job. But inequality in the workplace is one thing, the ability to lock someone up without cause is quite another. Embarrassed by her protests that the boy is not her own, the department start actively campaigning against Collins, indicating that she is an unfit mother and mentally unstable - getting her sectioned under a code 12 internment, code 12 being a term used to jail or commit someone who was deemed difficult or an inconvenience. Enraged by the injustice of this and other cases involving the LAPD, a preacher Reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich) complains daily of police mistreatment in his radio broadcasts and takes up the Christine Collins case as a personal mission to right the wrongs she has faced.

Clint Eastwood's first of two late 08 releases (the other being Gran Torino) is a typical Eastwood helmed picture. Sparse, understated, efficient. He has a confidence in the director's chair that comes with having directed films for nearly 40 years. Filming takes just a few weeks, he apparently rarely does multiple takes of a particular scene. If he likes the way his actors have done it first time round, he'll call cut and move on to the next scene. There's no irritating little tics like "clever" camera placements, edits or swooping pans. He is totally comfortable with placing the camera in the middle of the shot, letting his actors do their thing, then moving on. And where he excels, is getting excellent performances out of his cast. This is very much Angelina Jolie's picture and it is not hard to work out why both Hilary Swank and Reese Witherspoon lobbied for the role. This has serious awards potential - a heck of a lot of screen time, period piece, wronged woman etc. Whilst I wouldn't say she knocks it out of the park, she is certainly very good and has probably done enough to secure the second Oscar nomination of her career. This is not a performance on the same level as Kristen Scott Thomas' but then nothing else this year will be.

The other strong points in Eastwood's film largely revolve around his production crew, for Chageling is as handsome a film as I've seen for a while. It retains a 20s feel throughout - wonderful sets, impeccable costumes, hair and makeup. Its photographed wonderfully - retaining the 20s look through the lens. You feel a lot of time and effort went in to recreating the time period and the entire production team deserve an art direction nod for their efforts here.

Good support comes from Jeffrey Donovan who delivers one great line in particular - the one on the trailer: "why would we be looking for someone we have already found" - a wonderful mix of embarrassment, exasperation and desperation. If myfilmvault.com was sad enough to have an award for best single line reading I dare say this would be in my top 5 for the year. Changeling is an enjoyable film, one that never drags and a film that effortlessly changes gear and focus as the story unfolds. The story itself edges towards incredulity - indeed were it not a true story you might even suggest the screenwriters had pushed things a little too far. Normally I roll my eyes whenever I see those dreaded words "based on a true story" come up at the beginning of the film. On this occasion it is both necessary and actually enhances the film.

B

Miss Potter (2006)

My shameful lack of up to date reviews goes on. And I just can't muster up any enthusiasm to write a full review of this disappointing and ultimately dull film.

Is it fair to criticize a biopic for its poor characterization? Couldn't the director and stars simply reply 'well, why bother watching the film if the characters don't interest you?' Clearly, that will not do. Not only would a director with this attitude be very unlikely to sell tickets for her films, it is perfectly reasonable to expect nuanced, sophisticated characterization from a biopic. For one, you might just not really know the characters - as was the case for me here. Indeed, a biopic will live and die on its characters and whilst this doesn't irredeemably guillotine its audience we are still subjected to a slow lingering cinematic demise equivalent to those unfortunate souls who fall into Saarlac's pit.

In short, this is a dull, uninteresting pastiche of cliches, contrivances and annoyances lumped into 90 poorly put together minutes. The end result is very unsatisfactory and it falls well below the emotional waterline which it is trying to tread. The film does eventually find it's feet in the last third, but it's too late to save it from mediocrity.

Very briefly, the film tells the story of Beatrix Potter's attempts to have her books published and the young editor Norman Warne (Ewan McGregor) who falls for them and her. Renee Zellweger, who I like, is disappointing as Beatrix and the character feels annoying and largely charmless, which I, like the film itself, am sure she wasn't. McGregor is given little to do and is even denied the one scene which might have added an extra layer of emotional meaning to the film. The best aspect of the characters is certainly Ruppert Potter's (Bill Paterson's) awesome sideburns.

Okay, I'm being unnecessarily mean, but some of the accolades showered on this are way wide of the mark, particularly that dreaded adjective "enchanting". Whilst Beatrix Potter clearly was an interesting character, she is anything but enchanting here and I just found the characterisation and development annoying and cliched. Emily Watson, as Millie Warne, Norman's sister, is probably the best thing in it (as she often is) but that is not saying much.

I just can't recommend this. It's not awful, and the last part of the film is far more satisfying that the clunky moments that lead up to it. Perhaps I just wasn't in the mood and this is better than I give it credit for but, regardless of whether I was in the mood or not, this is certainly not recommendation quality. I think a

C

is fair...

I await disagreement.

Cinematography of the Year 2003

Yet another very difficult call this year. You could potentially make a case for all of the five films in my top 5. Although, really, the cinematography in Return of the King, good though it is, is essentially just a follow on from the efforts of the previous two films, the visualisations of the City of the Dead (in particular) and also Minas Tirith (the City of the Kings) is especially stunning and the film is worthy of inclusion in any discussion on those two visual megaliths alone.

Another two films outside my top 5 also merit attention for visual thrills. The first is the spectacular bloodbath that is Zatoichi. Katsumi Yanagishima clearly has an eye for blood and the powerful effect copious amounts of it can have on an audience. When done well, that is, and not crudely, as in another 2003 film, Kill Bill: Volume 1. Tarantino could take a lesson here (which, or so I would argue, he did for volume 2).

Three of the films in my top 5 (The Station Agent, All the Real Girls and Mystic River) come from the same visual plateau (Americana) yet each, especially taken together, show just how light, atmosphere and backdrop can so heavily both influence, and reflect, mood. Mystic River feels dark and foreboding throughout, like the secrecy and undercurrents of discomfort that layer the town and its inhabitants. All the Real Girls is classic David Gordon Green (though it is Tim Orr and not Adam Stone - see my previous post - on photography duty here), dreamy, sleepy, soulful, romantic, all light perfectly reflecting and encompassing sound, like the quiet ping of a raindrop on a spring pond. Beautiful and sensuous. And the Station Agent - quiet, lazy, dreamy, backwater America washed with a cinematic landscape which makes you want to live it and, indeed, live in it. If I had to choose between them, All the Real Girls would win. I just love the look and feel of Green's films and can't wait to see his latest effort, Snow Angels.

Lost in Translation (cinematography by Lance Acord) is a different animal entirely, looking radiant and dazzling, bejewelled by the throbbing neon lights of a Hong Kong reminiscent (but no more than that) of Christopher Doyle's heartached Hong Kong landscapes in the films of Wong Kar Wai. Lost in Translation pushes the eventual winner close too.

However, the 2003 award goes to the second film not in my top 5, the Polish brothers' Northfork. I would watch this again purely for M. David Mullen's photography. The look is a perfect balance between dreamworld and reality, as though the stark, ethereal and dolorous bright light, inhabited by its strange, unearthly creatures, is itself the delicate and lonely bridge between this world and the next, into which the town of Northfork is shortly to disappear. Atavistic and brilliant, the light divides the two worlds, and moods, of the film perfectly. Northfork is a very good film, though one that disappeared too quickly, and its cinematography is well worthy of this award, which it steals ahead of more famous, and more heralded, company. Indeed, the company it finds itself in, and, ultimately ahead of (in this category) in 2003, is testimony to Mullen's strange and beautiful achievement.

Shotgun Stories (2007)

My colleague is going to despair. I finally get around to writing a review for (what I thought was) a 2008 film, then IMDB tells me it's 2007, even though it's only just come out on DVD. What to do? Well, I'll just have to go ahead and review the film anyway.

Shotgun Stories, a classic Matt-pleasing lyrical, pensive, beautifully shot, drama, set in the American south, focuses on three brothers, named Kid, Boy and Son who feud with four half-brothers following the death of their common father. Hated by Kid, Boy and Son, but beloved by the other brothers, Cleaman, Stephen, Mark and John, their father's legacy divides an already unstable family and shatters an uneasy peace, leading to inevitable tragedy, as plain and as sure as the sweet Arkansas sun laying in the rivets and shards of cotton in the fields which form the sumptuous and delicate backdrop to this unassuming, but engaging, human tragedy.

From the start, this is a powerful film. You begin by thinking that Film-maker Jeff Nichols has chosen very poor names for his lead characters but, following the powerful and foreboding funeral scene (eaten up on screen by Son, played by Michael Shannon, more on whom later), it soon dawns on the viewer that their names bear the indelible mark of a neglectful and abusive father who couldn't give so much of a damn as to give them a proper name. Notably unlike his other four sons, who proclaim, with all honesty and integrity, that their father was a changed man after he ran out on Kid, Boy and Son. It's a powerful message - a history, a legacy, is a hard thing to shake at the best of times, but harder still when your name, and how it contrast with that of more favoured and fortunate siblings, stands as a constant reminder to pain, loss, struggle and turmoil, never clearer than when Son, at his father's funeral, reflects that their father ran out on them "to be raised by a hateful woman" his voice bleeding with pregnant rage.

As required by character-lead dramas, the performances here are high end and the characters deep, fluid and interesting. Michael Shannon, as Son, steals the film. An incredible mixture of Joaquin Phoenix, Di Caprio and early Brando, Shannon gives a performance here that suggests he will go on to greater things. I hope he does, he deserves to. Son is one of those rare characters whose fate you just feel tide to and in whose world you have some strange urge to belong, despite its difficulty and struggle. A great performance. Douglas Ligon and Barlow Jacobs, as Boy and Kid respectively, have more to do than the brothers from the other side of the family, and both ably support Shannon and all three brothers are deep, interesting, characters that stand well above the level of caricature, not always easy with a film such as this. The other four brothers are less developed, with the exception of the interesting and pained Cleaman (Michael Abbot Jr.), and this is a flaw, but one that will have to be excused, given the film's running time. It doesn't, I think, have designs on being 'epic' and that will be reflected in the final grade.

Shot by David Gordon Green (on producer duty here)'s favorite cinematographer Adam Stone (who photographed Green's George Washington, All The Real Girls and Undertow), this looks accomplished, lyrical and stunning, the images deliberately provoking contrasts with one another and the overall mood of the film (Green's influence on Nichols is palpable here). The score, by Lucero Pyramid, is suitably haunting and compelling as well.

I really liked this and will add it to my collection as soon as possible. It's very much my kind of film and that is reflected in my grade, so the recommendation comes with that warning that this is very me, but that is not to say it isn't very you either. Well, well, worth a go and well worth an

A-