LONDON CITY NIGHTS: Emma Stone

Monday, October 10, 2016

Review: 'La La Land' (2016) directed by Damien Chazelle [LFF 2016]

Monday, October 10, 2016 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Roughly halfway through Damien Chazelle's La La Land, Emma Stone's would-be actor Mia is fretting about her upcoming one woman show. "It just feels really nostalgic to me." "That's the point." Ryan Gosling's jazz pianist boyfriend Sebastian replies. "Are people going to like it?" she responds. He turns to her with that cooler-than-cool Gosling gaze and replies "Fuck 'em".

"Fuck 'em" indeed. It's a naked bit of self-examination from writer/director Damien Chazelle, who's perhaps understandably worried that the reason the big budget tap-dancing trad-musicals have all but disappeared from our screens is because nobody wants to see them. Sure, you get the odd (generally iffy) Broadway adaption here and there, but we're a long way from the days of Singin' in the Rain, West Side Story and My Fair Lady.

He needn't worry, La La Land is one of the most sure-fire critical and commercial darlings I've seen in a very, very long time. It's got two of the most bankable, adored stars in Hollywood being very funny, very sweet and dancing their socks off. It's got gorgeous faux Technicolor palette and full Cinemascope photography. It's got a script that, despite the sugar-coated trappings of the genre, manages to feel vividly real. It's got musical numbers so dazzling that, in an auditorium full of jaded film critics at the London Film Festival, the opening sequence received a spontaneous round of rapturous applause.

Set in what feels like a dream of contemporary Los Angeles, La La Land is the story of Mia and Sebastian's relationship over one perma-summery year. They first meet when cutting each other up on the freeway, Sebastian honking his horn and giving Mia the finger as he pulls past her. "What an asshole..." she mutters. But soon all too soon - despite their protestations that they despise one another and there's absolutely no chemistry between them - they're falling in love.

What follows is admittedly cut from some pretty familiar cloth: their relationship grows, encounters problems and the two engage in some soul-searching about just what they mean to each other. But despite the familiar template this still surprises, serving up a romance that's simultaneously personal and universal, and one that concludes with an astonishingly effective emotional crescendo.

The ghosts of the golden age of Hollywood haunt these characters, looming in the background of scenes throughout, and at one point Chazelle stylishly and memorably mirrors an establishing shot from Rebel Without a Cause. But the film avoids outright fetishising old Hollywood, instead subjecting it to a mild critical examination via its most extroverted manifestation - the all singin' all dancin' musical. Though Gosling and Stone might tapdance their way down the streets like Astaire and Rogers, they're rooted firmly in 2016 - one of my favourite character touches is that the screen of Mia's iPhone 4S is cracked, an incidental detail that speaks volumes about her life.

Though crammed full of surface retro-stylings, the film consistently argues for innovation rather than slavish copying. The main vehicle for this is Gosling's Sebastian, who's initially obsessed with jazz dinosaurs and has an idea of musical purity lodged sometime in the 30s. It's only when he begins to experiment with form and removes the muso stick from up his own ass that he begins to loosen up and enjoy his art rather than merely appreciate it. Stone's Mia goes through a similar process, evolving from someone craving the approval of others to defining success in their own terms.

To convey all that while singing and dancing isn't going to be a picnic, but Chazelle simply couldn't have cast two better leads. Gosling in particular exudes a timeless style and poise, staring out from the screen with a hangdog yet confident expression that, appropriately enough, has more than a tinge of James Dean to it. He is every inch the moviestar, approaching every scene with grace and jaw-dropping cool. As a graduate of The Mickey Mouse Club it's no surprise that he can sing and dance, but few about these days could slide into a musical number so sleekly and naturally. Stone is also wonderful - the duo fizzing with refreshingly old-school chemistry.

I'd come to think that films like La La Land just couldn't get made anymore. These are insincere times, and this is a painfully sincere movie about two fools drifting in and out of love. It presents a gently loping, largely tension-free story without an atom of irony and resists the urge to insert vestigial elements like comedy best-friends and bitchy villains. It just is, functioning as a contemporary ideal of what the Hollywood studio machine once could (and amazingly, apparently still can) do best.

Damien Chazelle was already sniffing at the big leagues with Whiplash. After La La Land he's going to be white-hot. I can't wait to see what he does next.

★★★★★

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

'Birdman' (2014) directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Tuesday, December 9, 2014 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

In Birdman Michael Keaton, an actor who achieved superstardom by playing a rubber-clad superhero in the early 90s and whose career has since faltered, plays an actor who achieved superstardom by playing a rubber-clad superhero in the early 90s and whose career has since faltered. Yup, it's going to be one of those movies.

Iñárritu's first foray into comedy turns out to be a feature length debate about the worth of creative endeavour. Various questions jostle for attention; the cultural worth of cinema v theatre, the notion of the 'death of the author', what comprises truth in art and the relative value of criticism. It's densely intellectual but not cold; very quickly you sense that Iñárritu's passion for his artistic philosophy.

We first meet Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) floating serenely in midair. He sways and bobs as he meditates, coolly observing that his dressing room "smells like balls". He's nestled within a Broadway theatre that's staging Thomson's own adaptation of Raymond Carver's short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. This play is Thomson's last throw of the dice, betting his fortune, his reputation and his health on its success. After a career in shallow blockbusters and shitty comedies he craves the artistic respect that only legitimate theatre can apparently provide. Thomson has a lot on his mind; financial, production and performance worries, not to mention the sinister voices in his head.

Thomson thus finds himself as the volatile sun at the centre of a theatrical solar system. Caught in his orbit are Jake (Zach Galifianakis), his best friend and producer of the play; Sam (Emma Stone), his fresh out of rehab daughter; Laura (Andrea Riseborough) his girlfriend and co-star, Lesley (Naomi Watts) a nervy first time Broadway actress; and Mike (Edward Norton), a method-actor prima donna. These characters run like rats around labyrinthine backstage corridors, their egos and neuroses clashing to hilarious effect.

Their interactions are beautifully observed but, refreshingly, Birdman is as much about form as it is about narrative. Save for two brief opening and closing scenes the film is structured to appear as if it's one single shot. The lens glides smoothly through the building as if viewing it from the perspective of a curious ghost. We follow characters around the corridors and onto the stage, swooping around time and space in ways obviously impossible for a physical camera.

You can almost taste the tang of the blood and sweat that's gone into making a movie like this; I'm getting a headache just thinking about the technical logistics and what you're demanding of your cast. Fortunately it pays off gangbusters. Aided by Emmanuel Lubezki (one of the best DPs in the business) this style quickly creates a tense, appropriately theatrical, atmosphere. The performances are shot through with electricity as we subconsciously understand that there can be no second-take, that what we're seeing is somehow realer than typical cinema.

Of course this is an illusion: perversely the naturalistic atmosphere is the result of digitally knitting together a huge number of elements. But importantly it's an illusion that's easy to overlook. Iñárritu's quest for some heightened state of acting truth is reflected in his character's compulsions; nearly all actors striving to inject genuine feeling in their performances. Birdman approaches this primarily through Keaton's Thomson, who frets throughout that he just doesn't have the chops to pull off the role.

With such a rigorous examination of technique the film would come completely unravelled in the presence of a single iffy performance. But everyone is great; so great that there's a decent argument this represents a career best for everyone involved. An obvious highlight is Edward Norton, who transmutes being a massive prick into vulnerability while simultaneously being hilarious. But this is unquestionably Keaton's film. Every one of his distinctive performative tics becomes a method of communicating inner turmoil to us. Much of the story is told on his expressive face, every sling and arrow hurled at him cranking up pressure which is released in increasingly bizarre (and visually fantastical) ways.

The only place the film truly comes unstuck is Iñárritu's bitter fixation on critics as instruments of destruction. He creates a pretty flimsy strawman in a demon badguy critic who promises to destroy Thomson's play purely on the basis that she doesn't like him. She explains that her review is the one thing that decides any New York theatrical success; a dramatic device that feels ripped more from 1930s Broadway musicals like 42nd Street or Footlight Parade than anything relevant to 2014. Her presence gives rise to a drunken tirade in which Keaton's character lets loose his views on critics, views so strongly expressed that I can only assume they're Iñárritu's own.

The whole sequence stinks of sour grapes, of Iñárritu is getting revenge on some critic who's disparaged him. Brad Bird's Ratatouille trod similar ground thematic ground to Birdman and similarly featured a ferocious critic as antagonist. Yet whereas Ratatouille's Anton Ego finds happiness through an artistic rekindling of why he enjoys food so much, Iñárritu's critic ends up having to eat her words in an unlikely front-page article where she's forced to admit that Birdman's hero (and by extension, Iñárritu) is a genius.

Maybe Iñárritu is a genius, but even so there's something nauseatingly vain about creating flimsy characters that exist only to grudgingly praise you. Thankfully Birdman is so performatively and structurally excellent that it's easy to overlook this. There's an embarrassment of cinematic riches tucked away in here; from the spine-tinglingly good moments of magical realism, to the emotional intensity, to the gobsmacking technical accomplishments, right through to the jazz drum solo score.

It's not quite perfect, but it comes painfully close. If you have any interest in cinema, performance and culture in general it's a hands down must see.

★★★★

Birdman is released January 1st.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

'Gangster Squad' (2013) directed by Ruben Fleischer, 3rd January 2013

Saturday, January 5, 2013 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

'Gangster Squad' is not a film to take seriously. It's got all the trappings of a sober exploration of how organised crime can seep into every crack of a city, the drastic lengths to which a police force goes to wipe it out and the consequences for those who stand up to evil and say 'no'. But you've seen all that rubbish before, in 'Gangster Squad' the 'big themes' are just a peg to hang an utterly bonkers story about some very silly men running around blowing stuff up in late 40s Los Angeles. And it's brilliant, hilarious fun.

Something that first looks like it's going to follow in the footsteps of 'L.A. Confidential' actually shares more cinematic DNA with Robert Rodriguez' 'Sin City' (2005) or even Warren Beatty's 'Dick Tracy' (1990). We open to Sean Penn as MegaGangster 'Mickey Cohen'. He's grubbily beating the crap out of a punching bag in slow motion as slow, ponderous dialogue tells us about the nature of violence. Every rope-like muscle squeezes and strains as he beats the bag. It's over-the-top, ridiculous. At this point the film hangs on a knife edge; if it's going to be this kind of cod-philosophical twaddle for two hours this is going to be rough watching.

Sean Penn as Mickey Cohen

Then, finally, Penn's face hones into view next to the punching bag. I do a double-take, what the hell have they done to him? He looks like a leather handbag stuffed full of snooker balls. Penn is playing a man that's just stepped off the pages of a 4 colour pulp crime comic book. I'd recently watched 'Cloud Atlas' which featured a lot of talented actors struggling to act their way through heavy prosthetic makeup so I was a little wary of the look, but Penn acts his pants off. Moral complexity is left at the door, Cohen is a power-hungry, greedy, sadistic and cruel man, his monstrous personality amply mirrored in his twisted appearance.

L.A. is danger of being utterly corrupted by this man, so who are you gonna call? We're introduced to our hero, Sgt. John O'Mara in a sequence that ends with him brutalising some seedy gangsters who kidnap an innocent young ingenue. He busts down the door and gets busy thwacking gangsters before saving the dame and strolling off into the sunset. Played stonily by Josh Brolin, he's the flip side of Penn's madmen gangster, though both share pulp origins. Though Brolin doesn't have the crazy prosthetics that Penn has, his face is similarly mask-like. He's got a lantern jaw, an old fashioned face that has obviously seen a lot of serious shit. Brolin plays him as an impregnable human statue, a veteran who is still fighting World War II in his head.

Josh Brolin as O'Mara. Now that's a face you can set your watch to.

The only hints we get of genuine humanity in O'Mara are the scenes with his long-suffering pregnant wife Connie (Mireille Evans). At first you think she's going to fit into the thankless role of the disapproving wife; it's no fun playing the one who's actively trying to prevent the exciting gangster action scenes the audience is craving. Fortunately, after some mild rumbles of disapproval, she seems to realise what kind of film she's in, and figures if her boneheaded husband is going to take down the most powerful gangster in L.A. then she's going to help him pick the best damn team for the job.

THE GANGSTER SQUAD
left to right - Giovanni Ribisi (the smart guy), Josh Brolin (the leader), Ryan Gosling (the sexy one), Anthony Mackie (the knife guy), Michael Pena (the kid) and Robert Patrick (the gunslinger)

And boy, what a team! I do love a good genre flick, and I always love a good 'getting the gang together' montage, particularly when we're introduced to one awesome character actor after another. Even better, they all have their own particular special skills. So we meet the guy that's good with knives (Anthony Mackie), the guy that's good with guns and his hungry young sidekick (Robert Patrick and Michael Peña) and the smart one 'Giovanni Ribisi'. We also get the reluctant one joining soon enough, the excellently named Sgt. Jerry Wooters, as played by the inestimably awesome Ryan Gosling.

Oh, Ryan Gosling. You could be peeling potatoes and still be utterly entrancing in a way that smokes damn near everyone else off the screen. There's just something about the way he looks at people, keeping mostly expressionless but somehow smiling beatifically with just his eyes. It's the damndest thing. In a film populated by wild caricatures he stands out as a recognisable human being, carrying much of the emotional heft that the film just about needs to keep us caring about our heroes.

Ryan Gosling as Wooters..... (’-’*)

There isn't much room for women in this tale of vicious beatings and exploding cars, but the genre calls for a femme fatale and so we meet Grace Faraday (Emma Stone), girlfriend of both Mickey Cohen and Gosling's Sgt Wooter. She's introduced slinking her way across a nightclub wearing a bright red dress. That pretty much tells you all you need to know about her: she's trouble. Unfortunately she never quite lives up to her femme fatale image. Stone gives a perfectly competent performance, but I like my 40s gangster molls with bite and danger rather than bewildered confusion and fear. She's almost reduced to the status of an object for men to fight over, something the film notes, but calling attention to it doesn't quite excuse it.

The L.A. that this film takes place in is a heightened reality, a distillation of genre pictures. The streets teem with familiar archetypes, from our leads right down to the smart-mouthed young bootblack that charmingly grifts people outside Cohen's extravagantly detailed nightclub 'Slapsy Maxie's'. From the pools of neon light that fill the downtown areas to the gently sundappled suburbia, everything has been constructed in a way that pounds relentlessly on our sense of nostalgia created through classic films.

Emma Stone as Grace Faraday.

Though 'Gangster Squad' has an keenly observed retro sensibility, Fleischer doesn't hesitate to use cutting edge technology to tell his story. Stand out moments include a perfectly constructed car chase scene that uses a roving CG camera to seamlessly show us both the wider geography of the chase and the character moments taking place within each vehicle. Another brilliant sequence involves a character walking suicidally into a nightclub with the intention of blowing away our villain. I think it's shot using a SnorriCam rig; a camera attached to the chest of the actor. The music becomes muffled, everything slows down a bit, we're locked onto their face as they walk forwards. It's a short moment in the film, but stands out as a great marriage of an actor's performance and confident use of technology to elevate the moment. The only slightly misjudged moment is a 'bullet time' sequence late in the film that goes on far too long. It takes a lot for me to get tired of stuff exploding in beautiful slow motion, but by this point in the film you're aching for some dramatic resolution.

'Gangster Squad' takes a lot of cues from genres other than the crime drama it overtly models itself upon. There's strong thematic elements of the Western running through it, Robert Patrick in particular could literally walk into an 1880s saloon and you wouldn't bat an eyelid. Slightly more subtly Western is the unshakably implicit moral divide between our heroes and villains. It's a real white hats v black hats scenario, our leads mow down scarred, ugly looking gangsters by the dozen.

Another slightly more unexpected influence on the film are videogames. Once the plot gets going, the film shifts into showing us a series of set-pieces that feel an awful lot like levels from a game. We get the obligatory stealth level, where our characters must sneak stealthily around a mansion swarming with guards, there's little minibosses to defeat that stand out purely because of their unusual choice in weapons. This all comes to a head in the final sequences, which are shot in a way that echoes modern cover shooters like the popular 'Uncharted' or 'Gears of War' series. More directly it quotes Rockstar's 'L.A. Noire', a comparison its hard to shake as our characters move from cover to cover, popping up to shoot gangsters pouring out of every corner of the screen.

Saying something looks like a videogame is generally a term of derision when it comes to film criticism, but not here. Visually the film repeatedly quotes pulp literature; the digital colour grading setting out to reproduce the covers of lurid, violent noir fiction. If you're looking for a bloodthirsty, exploitative modern equivalent to this, then you could do a lot worse than by looking at videogames, which entertain you with a neverending stream of two-dimensional bad guys to satisfyingly mow down.

'Gangster Squad' is a fantastic film, it's conscious of what it is and successful at what it wants to be. It's incredibly violent, but manages to be hilariously deadpan right through. Just little shot choices leave the audience giggling at the audacity of what we're seeing. It's a shame the film had such a torturous gestation period, (its release delayed and sequences reshot after US shootings) but the final product is an utterly compelling, thrilling experience and deserves to be a box office hit.

****/*****

LONDON CITY NIGHTS