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Showing posts with label Scarlett Johansson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scarlett Johansson. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
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If you crave the sight of superheroes bashing apart robots then Avengers: Age of Ultron will not disappoint. Within these glossy 141 minutes an armada of CG robots are beheaded, exploded, sliced apart, crushed, electrified, melted and disarticulated. Buildings are reduced to rubble, cars are tossed about, extras run every which way screaming and gigantic floating ships buzz around in the sky. Everything is happening at once! But also, puzzlingly, nothing is happening.
The film continues right where Avengers Assemble left off with our heroes mopping up the dangling plotlines of that film. After that in the mood for celebration; but these spirits are dampened when Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) accidentally creates Ultron (James Spader) an evil robot that wants to wipe out humanity. The rest of the film involves the familiar faces of Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Lia, Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) tracking down Ultron and foiling his nefarious scheme.
Along the way they pick up a couple of new recruits, the Maximoff twins Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and zen robot Superman-a-like The Vision (Paul Bettany). Rounding out the cast are a smattering of supporting characters from the Marvel franchise and a couple of character actors who look happy to collect a paycheque.
What's most vexing about Age of Ultron is that there's nothing thunderingly wrong with it. The action is competently shot, the script gets to the point with a minimum of fuss and there's a big action scene about every half an hour. Joss Whedon has delivered a summer superhero blockbuster that ticks every box required of it. I've always approached criticism on the maxim that I'd much rather watch an interesting failure than successful mediocrity, but the latter describes Age of Ultron to a tee.
Part of the problem is that, very quickly, the film defines itself as an interstitial chapter leading up to the future Thanos/Infinity Gauntlet films. Entire scenes are devoted to setting up this future threat, leaving us in no doubt that the 'real' peril is still to come. The consequence of this is that the narrative we're actually watching feels increasingly sidelined. This also means the tug towards the status quo is irresistible to the point where, as the credits roll, we are almost in precisely the same place as we began.
This applies to the increasingly repetitive character arcs as well; so the Hulk learns to control his rage a bit more, Black Widow comes to terms with her history a bit more, Captain America gets over the past a bit more and Thor worries about Asgard a bit more. Theis repetition is especially egregious in Tony Stark, who by my count for the fifth time in a row learns an important lesson about hubris. Maybe this time it'll stick, but given his vaunted presence in the upcoming Captain America: Civil War I'm guessing probably not.
That lack of forward momentum even extends to developments within the movie. The crowning moment of the trailers for this film is the promise of an upgraded 'heavy' Iron Man duking it out with the Hulk. This fight plays out exactly as loudly as you'd expect, the destruction broadly quoting the climactic scenes of Man of Steel. Problem is, the fight is of so little consequence to the plot that it could be cut from the film with little to no impact to the narrative. It's an action sequence for the sake of an action sequence in a film that exists because an Avengers movie was scheduled for 2015.
Even a contractual obligation with hooks for future instalments dug into it like ticks could say something with it's narrative. Age of Ultron doesn't. In fact it almost aggressively resists being about anything. The closest we get is a repeated motif where the characters idly ponder whether they're monsters or not, complete with a couple of basic visual references from Frankenstein. Symbolically it's about as deep as a puddle, believe me I tried to find something to grip onto here - but that's the best I could manage.
Pressed for something to recommend, I enjoyed James Spader's villainous turn as Ultron, who reminded me of a somewhat toned down version of Bender from Futurama. Rarely have I seen such a moustache-twirlingly evil robot on screen. Sure his motivations and intentions are kinda confusing, but he's never less than amusing to watch, dancing around the frowning superheroes like an refugee Disney villain.
That's about all there is to say about this. There's a crushing inevitability to Age of Ultron. It will make a ridiculous amount of money. It will be hoovered up by mewling nerds who're happy with watching things happen. It will successfully spawn sequels ad nauseum. Honestly, it's a dull and pointless experience and you shouldn't bother with it.
But come on, let's not kid ourselves. You'll go anyway.
★★
Avengers: Age of Ultron is released 24th April.
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Saturday, August 23, 2014
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Lucy is the dumbest film about being smart ever. Working from the discredited (many, many times over) pseudoscientific myth about humans only using 10% of their brain at any time, this film imagines where we might go if we used more. Super-awareness? Telekinesis? Mind control? Manipulating electronics? Being able to drive a car really really well? The resulting film is an eyebrow-raising catalogue of barminess, a film stuffed to the gills with tiny little idiosyncracies and half-baked philosophising that left me (and much of the audience I saw it with) giggling in bemusement.
Our heroine, Lucy (Scarlett Johansson), is a student living in Taipei. We meet her being pestered by her boyfriend to deliver a mysterious package on his behalf. Suspicious, she declines - but the point is rendered moot when he forcibly handcuffs a briefcase to her wrist and sends her into a den of vicious Taiwanese mobsters. The package turns out to contain a new type of clubbing drug and Lucy is subsequently pressganged into muling it to Europe. The package implanted into her abdomen, soon splits - sending the substance careening around her nervous system and giving her superpowers. (The questionable profitability of turning clubbers into superpowered god-beings is unfortunately not explored).
The rest of Lucy is split between her accessing ever more of her brain's potential (helpfully indicated by title cards reading 50%, 70% etc) and Morgan Freeman delivering a hilariously clumsily-written lecture cut together with stock footage of cheetah's eating antelops, 1920s footage of clowns and wild pigs fucking. Freeman deserves a medal for being able to deliver this crap with a straight face, perhaps the only actor working today with the gravitas to pull off exposition this ridiculous.
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| Oh hey it's a bit like the Matrix. |
Lucy is a patchwork quilt sewn from a thousand different influences. One minute there's a prehistoric CG landscape that echoes The Tree of Life, the next we're pulling imagery straight from Akira or action sequences reminiscent of The Matrix. It's difficult to accuse Besson of theft, there's real love in these homages. The biggest lift comes from a very unlikely place; the narrative free cinema of Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy and Ron Fricke's Baraka and Samsara. The quickfire, time-shifted shots of traffic and food preparation mirror Koyaanisqatsi and Besson goes so far as to transplant actual footage from Fricke's films into his montages.
Given that many of these films rank in my all time favourites, theoretically Lucy should be onto a winner with me. Problem is, all those films are incredibly intelligently constructed pieces of cinema with oodles of considered philosophy behind them and Lucy is dumb as a box of rocks.
Intentionally or not, one of the central planks of Lucy is that mind altering drugs are fucking amazing. Notably, the crystalline drug that causes this raise in consciousness looks an awful lot like MDMA (albeit bright blue). There's a decent argument that Lucy's experience mirrors that of someone trying the drug for the first time. As she hits her high she feels totally connected to the world, able to perceive the heartbeats and moods of those around her. She even calls her Mum in the middle of the night to tell her she loves her! At this point I half expected the rest of the film to be Scarlett Johansson gurning her face off, reaching for laser beams and waving glow-sticks in people's faces.
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| This magic brain drug looks like a lot of fun. |
The effect of this druggy psychedelia combined with half-assed cosmological pondering is a wonderfully accurate simulation of being trapped by a wide-eyed sweaty clubber in a chill-out room while they spout absolute bollocks. Thankfully, just as it's difficult to genuinely dislike a 6am amphetamine mystic, it's difficult to genuinely dislike Lucy. It's so adorably sincere about its nonsense, so willing to go the extra crazy mile and so damn unpredictable that it just about works as an exercise in curiosity. You watch because you want to find out where the hell Besson is going with all this.
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| Lucy is a movie that seriously postulates that a really really smart person can grow extra hands. |
This curiosity is fortunate, because narratively Lucy doesn't work at all. The plot, such as it is, revolves around Taiwanese gangsters hunting Lucy down while she in turn hunts down the smugglers holding onto the drug. Problem is, about 25 minutes into the film Lucy stops being a character and turns into a robot. With Johansson in emotionless killer mode comparisons to Under The Skin are inevitable, but the same act doesn't really work in an action film. There's no emotional hook to get us rooting for Lucy and her quick onset of invulnerability makes every fight or chase sequence completely tension free.
The visual effects go some way to picking up the slack. There's some genuinely imaginative visualisations of what it's like to be able to perceive the whole electromagnetic spectrum, see through people's skin or burrow into a person's memories. The highlight is the climactic psychedelic trip-out sequence (I love these) that kinetically zips us around time and space, taking in Victorian Times Square, some confused American Indians, a vicious dinosaur, outer space and finally re-enacting Michelangelo’s The Creation Of Adam with a dodgy looking CG monkey-woman. None of this makes much sense, but at least it looks nice.
God only knows what Besson is actually trying to say in Lucy. Is he going for an action-film adaptation of Flowers for Algernon? Trying to bring the philosophies of Koyaaniqatsi to a blockbuster audience? Has he had a life-changing drug experience that he really wanted to share it with us? We may never know. What is certain is that Besson really thinks he's actually saying something profound. He's really not, but he's so confident that he is that it's almost endearing.
Lucy is really really far from being a 'good' film, but it's certainly an interesting one. Real stupid, but at least it's not boring.
Lucy is really really far from being a 'good' film, but it's certainly an interesting one. Real stupid, but at least it's not boring.
★★★
Lucy is out now.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Sunday, June 22, 2014
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In 2010 Jon Favreau had the world at his feet. With the rapturously received Iron Man having kicked off the gargantuan Marvel movie franchise he was Hollywood's new blocksbuster golden boy. As they began preproduction on the billion dollar grossing The Avengers he was the presumptive director, ready to ascend to the heights of a Spielberg or a Nolan. Then it all went a bit wrong. The Marvel execs stuck their beak into Iron Man 2, constantly tossing Favreau last minute script revisions and crowbarring in plot elements for upcoming films. This, coupled with financial wheeling and dealing resulted in a mess of a movie, a production so frazzling Favreau openly worried whether his career as a director was kaput.
And then he made Cowboys & Aliens. Enough said.
Now, after three years away from the directors chair, he's returned with Chef. Gone is the CG bombast, in its place a small-scale indie film about a talented artist stymied by thoughtless suits who want him to keep on putting out the same old schlock. There's more than a whiff of autobiography here, especially as Favreau, writes, directs and stars. Getting back to basics with a tightly crafted personal movie like this is a kind of personal exorcism, taking ones demons and moulding them into art.
Favreau plays Carl Caspers, Head Chef at a prestigious restaurant. This is a man entirely committed to food, devoting his entire day to sourcing ingredients, preparing menus and actually cooking it. A few years ago he was the hot new chef in town, doyenne of the food critics and achingly fashionable. But now, through little fault of his own, he's become complacent. The owner of the restaurant is eager not to mess with a winning formula, meaning that Casper's been serving the same menu for what feels like forever - every time he attempts to mix things up a bit he's immediately shot down.
Things all come to a head when he gets a snooty review from an online critic (hmm...). Casper blows his top, ending up as a much-mocked viral video. Sacked from the restaurant and hiding in reclusive disgrace he eventually concludes that he should run a travelling food van where he can have total control over what he serves. And so we learn that the path to redemption is paved with ham and cheese toasties.
In a bit of a perverse twist, much of what makes Chef enjoyable is also the reason why it gets a little tedious. For example, the practically pornographic fascination with food preparation is obviously borne of Favreau's actual passion for food. In the opening scenes of the film you watch him slice an onion up, his skill with a kitchen knife telling us all we need to know about both the character and the actor's skill. But injecting so much of yourself into a film makes it feel Favreau cleaning out his closet, and the main subplot of connecting with his precocious son is served up with a few too many spoonfuls of sugar.
That said, Chef is such a breezy, optimistic and modest film that it's difficult to dislike. Favreau is a solid (though not exceptional) actor, but this role plays to his matey, intelligently masculine traits. Fortunately he's ably supported by an excellent supporting cast including Scarlett Johansson, Dustin Hoffman Oliver Platt and an all too brief appearance from his real life best bud, Robert Downey Jr. I guess when you're a Hollywood bigshot it's easy to corral A-listers for a day's shooting here and there. That said, they're stars for a reason, and this stable of charismatic characters goes a long way to buoying up the film. Heck, even the cute kid, Emjay Anthony, is tolerable enough.
Decently handled though it is, the bonding with his son element of the story is riddled with cliche. What felt far more relevant to me was the way online critics are treated. I saw this at a press screening, surrounded by others of my ilk, and as Favreau righteously rages against those that smugly sit behind a keyboard and dissect what others have poured their soul into there was a ripple of uncomfortableness across the room. Favreau isn't so gauche as to broadside against all critics, but there is the definite sensation that the Oliver Platt character is a punching bag against which he can beat out his frustrations. Maybe in future I will reflect before I dish out some particular cruelty... (nah).
Anyway, Chef is unlikely to attract too much opprobrium as it's pretty good. It's slight and inconsequential, but the tale of a man discovering inner peace through hocking toasted sandwiches to hipsters just about works. The passion for cooking burns from the screen; lending it the credibility that's a large part of why it works. The film is undoubtedly some form of therapy for Favreau, but it's a pleasant and interesting enough therapy to eavesdrop on.
★★★
Chef is on general release from June 25th
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
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When Iron Man was released in 2008 it was a shot across the bows of the superhero genre. A combination of great dialogue, brilliant casting and slick pop-inflected direction added up to a film that, while easily recognisable as a Hollywood blockbuster, possessed something new and unique. But six years on, with nine Marvel films and a TV show under their belt, what was once shiny and new is now slightly and predictable. Audiences know the score with Marvel movies so they have to mix things up - be it through the buddy cop comedy caper of Iron Man III or the upcoming bonkers-looking space opera Guardians of the Galaxy. So what's new for Captain America and his buddies in SHIELD? Well Marvel has decided to get political, and boy is it a mess.
The Winter Soldier revolves around a simple question; what if the goodies were (wait for it) secretly baddies? SHIELD, who have always been depicted as US Homeland Security on steroids were treading pretty questionable moral ground in The Avengers and as The Winter Soldier opens we find them wading through even murkier waters. They're building a fleet of enormous flying gunships capable, as a proud Nick Fury explains, of eliminating threats before they even have a chance to harm anyone. This doesn't sit right with the upstanding Captain America, who blithely notes: "This isn't freedom. This is fear."
This all sets the stage for a twisty-turny tale of double-crosses and betrayals interspersed with car chases, huge explosions and burly guys punching each other to no obvious effect. It's pretty clear what the Russo brothers are going for: All the President's Men with superheroes. They've even cast Robert Redford, who obligingly leans against windows overlooking Washington and hammily pronounces guff like "In order to build a better world, sometimes you need to tear the old one down." (During this scene a huge, blinking neon arrow is pointing at Redford reading "He's the baddie!".)
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| I suspect that knowing that Captain America is a pretty boring superhero, they put in this guy, an even MORE boring superhero, to make Cap seem more interesting in comparison. |
There's a whole bunch wrong here but it all boils down to simple cowardice. The film is obviously the product of a post Wikileaks/Snowden world, drawing none-too-subtle parallels between the mass surveillance of SHIELD and the evil shit the NSA has been up to. The problem is that though the film sternly wags its finger at this sort of thing via the totemic 'golden generation' figure of Captain America, it just doesn't have the guts to be outright condemnatory. The end product is a castrated film, one that wears the trappings of a political thriller but without the politics - rendering it impossibly slight at best and dangerously simplistic at worst.
The biggest flaw is that with agencies like the NSA and GCHQ et al being genuinely supervillainous in real life there's very little room for exaggeration. So the film becomes an infantile exploration of what might happen in a mass-surveillance society if there were a few superheroes about, which feels vaguely masturbatory. But hey, a bit of wish fulfilment isn't such a bad thing right? At the very least it should be cathartic watching a muscular man in a brightly coloured costume decking the person who ordered all this surveillance.
It's not - primarily because the crux of the film is two quasi-fascist organisations squaring off against each other. The anti-democratic Fury-knows-best tight uniforms and black ops wetwork world of SHIELD versus HYDRA, literal Nazis. It's Nazis versus Nazis folks, and the film expects you to root for the 'good' Nazis. If this weren't merely an episode in an ongoing multi-billion dollar franchise it could have shaken things up, but it's almost obliged to return to the status quo by the time the credits roll. Nothing can change too much in Marvel's world, so in place of actual politics the film settles for criticising the mass surveillance of citizens by painting it as an attack on the incredibly nebulous concept of 'freedom'.
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| Easy on the eyeliner there son. |
We're in George W Bush country here folks, the extent of Captain America's political nous expressed as "The price of freedom is high... and it's a price I'm willing to pay!". Listening to doggerel like this you want to slap the film around the head - it's rubbish like this that created the very situation you're criticising! The conclusion it arrives at is that mass state surveillance is an alien intrusion into the fine process of US militarism and that once you've gotten rid of that problem everything will be just hunky-dory and we can go back to the 'regular' military state. So The Winter Soldier ultimately finds itself in the perverse position of arguing that we merely need the 'right' kind of fascism.
Frankly it's a bit of a mess elsewhere too. Chris Evans does the best he can, but it's difficult to get away from the fact that Captain America is a pretty dull superhero. Things aren't helped by giving him a partner who can fly (which is ready salted crisps as far as superpowers go) and one that can shoot people. The titular Winter Soldier is a non-character, having maybe 4 or 5 lines in the entire film, spending most of his screentime glaring petulantly like a teenage goth forced to go on holiday to Disneyworld.
It's all a bit of a shame. If this film had a bit more bravery and brains it could have been a great piece of subversive agitprop with a huge potential audience. As it is it's just a dumb blockbuster with pretensions of relevance working studiously through the established Marvel movie formula. A formula that's looking increasingly creaky as the countless sequels tick by.
★
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is on general release.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Monday, December 30, 2013
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In Her, a man falls passionately and sincerely in love with his computer. As a society we have long passed the point of no return with technology: our smartphones, tablets, laptops and computers a virtual prosthesis storing our treasured memories, our tastes, our political opinions - even recognise our speech patterns and beginning to converse with us in an abstract and imperfect way. Her is set in a Los Angeles 10 or 15 years in the future, yet the notion of someone only able to find security, emotional connection and intimacy in technology is an issue very much of the now.
The centre of the film is Joaquin Phoenix's Theodore, a mildly depressed man who's in the process of being divorced by his childhood sweetheart. He works for a website called BeautifulWrittenLetters.com, which deals in artificial emotional intimacy, Theodore's job is writing intimate letters between lovers, families and friends, ironically weaving beautiful turns of phrase even as he's dead to the world. Though he can expertly summon up tender happiness for others he's incapable of doing so for himself, still numbly fixated on his future ex-wife Catherine (Rooney Mara).
His perpetual broken heart begins to affect his personal life and so, in need of something to help organise himself, he buys a new type of artificially intelligent operating system able to converse, learn and analyse, all which adds up to a scarily accurate, if discorporeal, simulation of a person. Theodore names his OS Samantha, and equipped with the husky, best-friend/confidant/vaguely dirty voice of Scarlett Johansson she becomes a constant presence in his life, constantly helpful, always dishing out good advice and just plain nice to be around. Very quickly Theodore surprises himself by realising he's falling in love with Samantha, and she realises she's falling in love with him.
Much of what makes Her work is the admirably straightforward way in which Jonze tackles this central relationship. The central idea is inescapably high concept, yet Theodore and Samantha's romance is always sincere, nuanced and resolutely ungimmicky. There's the odd moment of levity as the lovers tackle the technological divide, but by and large this is a love story played dead straight. That we buy into this is testament to a very finely tuned script by Jonze, the sadsack gravitas that Phoenix brings to the role and the amazing voice-work by Johansson: even though we obviously can never see Samantha, we feel we know her very quickly.
This is the core of the film, yet surrounding it is some of the most fabulously impressive production design I've seen in a very long time. Spike Jonze's 'tomorrow' Los Angeles is always absolutely fascinating to look at, a peek into a world that feels more concrete than practically every other cinematic future. The film really rewards close attention - quickly you pick up on the pastel, calming shades that renders this world welcoming and pliable - very subtly infantilising the people that live within it.
Look even closer and you notice consistent future fashion amongst everyone on screen, wearing high waisted trousers, multiple layers of collars and vaguely 1970s influenced haircuts. Theodore, generally occupying centre frame, tends to wear a lot of red (visually connecting him to the setup screens for Samantha), which makes him stand out in this lived-in tech utopia. These little touches are the hallmark of intelligent and considered direction, something Her has in spades. Jonze works with a gentle touch, gradually seducing us rather than blowing our minds with overtly stylism, everything on screen primed to further the themes of the film.
One of the most important aspects of Samantha's software is that she is able to learn, adapt and grow. Theodore thus functions as both father and lover, his view of the world influencing her development as he unconsciously teaches her about the world through the prism of his own experiences. As their bond develops we detect an uneasy tinge of co-dependency to the relationship, Samantha obviously developing into a person in her own right yet virtually shackled to Theodore; after all he bought her and ultimately she is his property.
This crucial wrinkle in their relationship drives the rest of the film, Theodore ultimately playing King Canute as he realises he can't push back the tide of Samantha's growth. She begins to talk to other OSs, in one alarming scene revealing she's in conversation with 8316 other people, and in love with 641 of them. She introduces him to a virtual simulation of philosopher Alan Watts that she's befriended, clearly unaware of the weird jealousy this instils in him - competing with a dead erudite virtual philosopher is new romantic territory for anyone. During one distressing scene Theodore can't reach Samantha and panics with the pathetic impotence of a social media devotee unable to get online, exposing this relationship as a pacifier or comfort blanket - all the thrills of intimacy and closeness with none of the nitty gritty human misery that tempers a strong relationship.
It's in the final third of the film where Her, unfortunately, becomes a little unstuck. The film shares close thematic resonance with Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror TV series, a series of individual stories about the logical conclusions of new technologies. In the episode Be Right Back a widow deals with her grief by signing up for a service that creates a digital replica of her dead husband from his activity on social media - a replica which initially fills an emotional void but soon occupies a disturbing, 'uncanny valley' half-life between life and death. Be Right Back has a haunting Twilight Zone bite to it that Her lacks and I crave. After a hugely promising and focused start, Her eventually devolves into vague and fluffy self-help. I'm not a cynic that shies away from happy endings, though I can't deny that Her's ending nicely wraps up the emotional development of the characters, it left me a bit cold. Essentially the film swerves away from asking interesting questions about technology and moves into fuzzier, conventional territory, which consequently lead a vague feeling of disengagement.
I wanted to like Her a lot more than I actually did. High concept, original and smartly constructed films like this are the reason I spend so much time at the cinema, yet as the chequered flag fell I was left unsatisfied. The spooky glimmers of transhuman relationships that drew me into the film are eventually discarded, leading to a disappointingly pat conclusion. Despite this, Her is absolutely worth seeing: a brilliant director firing on all cylinders and asking some timely questions about how we live. Unfortunately when it comes to the answers it provides, I didn't buy it.
★★★
Her is on general release from February 14th.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
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Joseph Gordon-Levitt does an awful lot of wanking in Don Jon. Not five minutes of the film pass without an image of his face, pale-lit in the glowing laptop twilight, jaw slightly ajar, eyes glassy, rhythmically tossing himself off. Gordon-Levitt writes, directs and stars in Don Jon, so I kind of wish that I could say the film itself was narcissistic masturbation to satisfy the half-baked artistic urges of an A-list actor. But I can't. Because Don Jon is great.
Gordon-Levitt plays the eponymous Jon. He's young, muscled and good looking, known as 'Don' Jon by his friends due to an unbroken streak of taking a girl home from a nightclub every Saturday night. Despite this, he doesn't seem to particularly enjoy sex. No, Jon (at least in his internal monologue) is an evangelist for pornography. He loves the stuff, dismayed that reality just can't compare to the pumped up tits, bums and lips of porn stars. His mania is such that even while lying in a post-coital doze with a beautiful woman wrapped around him, he has to sneak away, crank up the laptop and crank off.
Jon instinctively objectifies women, though we quickly realise he's not entirely to blame for his behaviour. We begin with a dizzying whirl of imagery showcasing the prevalence of pornography right through modern culture, from advertising, television and cinema right down to the bro-fuelled fistbumping lingo of his friends as they rate women out of ten and refer to them as 'pink', 'ponytail' or 'blonde'. This objectification comes to a head when he meets Barbara (Scarlett Johansson). Jon describes her as "the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life", the operative word there being 'thing'. Barbara is everything that Jon has been trained to desire and so, naturally, he falls head over heels for her. Now he's the cat that's got the cream, but even with Barbara he still can't achieve the same sexual fufilment that he gets from internet porn.
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| Jon and his father (Tony Danza) |
First and foremost, Don Jon is about the psychological effects of pornography addiction. Gordon-Levitt argues that it subtly warps your perspective, giving you unrealistic expectations of what sex should be and encourages you to view women as passive recipients of sex rather than partners. Don Jon goes a bit deeper than this, eventually concluding that much of popular culture functions as pornography and that it leads to an inevitable emotional solipsism; an overwhelming desire to fulfil ones own needs above all else.
Though he's committed to his hedonism, Jon is also committed to his Catholicism, attending church with his family and confessing his sins. Confession genuinely works for Jon: every Sunday he breezily explains how much sex he's had and precisely how many times he's masturbated this week. To absolve his sins he's told to say x Lords Prayers and x Hail Marys, which he does while pumping iron in the gym. These confession scenes recur throughout the film, the amount of penitence he's instructed to varying by how much sex and how many wanks he's had. Interestingly, Gordon-Levitt never shows us the priest. Instead, we fill the role - Jon speaks at us - directly challenging us to judge the morality of his actions, and, by extension our own.
With all this talk of objectification, penitence and emotional solipsism you'd be forgiven for thinking that Don Jon is a rather serious and worthy movie. It's really not, though it's grappling with some pretty weighty issues, the tone is light, comedic and slightly wry throughout. This is essentially a film about wanking, so the jizz jokes are appropriate as well as damn funny. Adding to the humour is that most of these characters are stereotypes, especially Jon's family, who have arrived fully formed via The Sopranos. They're all grotesques, but importantly they're well drawn, convincingly played and loveable grotesques.
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| Barbara (Scarlett Johansson) |
It's Gordon-Levitt and Johansson that do the heavy lifting. Both are playing outside their comfort zones, and both are playing rather unpleasant people. Johansson trashes it up a bit as Barbara, snarling and purring through a nasal New Jersey accent. Jon and his friends call her a "fuckin' bitch", only crime she's guilty of is reflecting the men's behaviour back at them, Jon and Barbara never really considering the other as a person, more as a mutual status symbols.
As fun a character as Barbara is, it's Jon that steals the show. He's surprisingly relatable for sexist, violent, homophobic wank fiend, a testament to Gordon-Levitt's writing and acting talent, shored up by his natural charisma. As Jon's view on the world evolves, we're right there alongside him. When he's attracted to Barbara, we're attracted to Barbara. When he's horny, we're horny. When he goes off Barbara, we go off Barbara. There's a pinch of young De Niro to the performance, a curl of the lip and the raise of an eyebrow speaking volumes as to his state of mind.
Directorially he's no slump either, the quick cutting between low bit-rate, washed out video as Jon browses porn a nice representation of the channel hopping, low attention span of the chronic internet masturbator. This depiction of addiction is straight from Darren Aronofsky's playbook from Requiem for a Dream, but given an online twist - what works there works here too. The film is also crammed with clever sound design, for example the Mac startup sound functions as a Pavlovian conditioner, letting the audience know that Jon is having a wank without us actually having to see it.
Don Jon is a very, very good film. Internet pornography is the elephant in the room in modern society and when Jon protests "all men look at it!" he's not far wrong. Yet considering how universally pervasive it is, this subject is almost always absent from cinema, because it's slightly embarrassing, kinda gross and next to impossible to portray with dignity. What self respecting young heart-throb wants to see themselves, jaw gritted, cock in hand, pleasuring himself on a 30 foot wide screen? The answer is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who with humour, intelligence and a confident cinematic style, tackles a sticky head on and comes out on top. Sure it gets a little gooey towards the climax, but I think it's earned it.
★★★★
Don Jon is in cinemas from November 15th.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Friday, February 1, 2013
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Appropriately, it opens with a murder. We’re on the Wisconsin
farm of serial killer Ed Gein, who proceeds to viciously bonk a man on the head
with a shovel. As the victim floppily
collapses we pan up to an incongruous figure salivating at the violence before
him. It’s Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony
Hopkins), who welcomes us to an exploration of his creative process and his
darker obsessions.
Set in 1959 ‘Hitchcock’
finds its subject at a crossroads. He’s
enjoying the financial and critical success of ‘North by Northwest’, but the perceived failure of ‘Vertigo’ still haunts him. He’s frustrated by the pressure to make more
blockbusters, and so, to general dismay becomes fixated on Robert Bloch’s lurid
book ‘Psycho’. Hitchcock wants show audiences something new
and shocking, and he sees ‘Psycho’ as
the perfect vehicle.
 |
| Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock |
His instincts are dead-on, but then we already
know that. Therein lies one of the major
problems with the film; it wants to create a state of tension about whether ‘Psycho’ is going to be a hit or
not. We see studio bosses worrying about
their reputations, forcing Hitchcock to mortgage his house and fund the
production himself. This strains
relations with his wife Alma (Helen Mirren), all of which cranks up the pressure
on an increasingly stressed man. This
attempt to raise the stakes never quite works as the success of ‘Psycho’ is never in the slightest
doubt. Frankly, if you make a
suspense-free film about ‘The Master of Suspense’ then you’ve misfired
somewhere.
Anthony Hopkins is absolutely brilliant as
Alfred Hitchcock. It’s a performance that occasionally tips over into caricature,
but Hitchcock revelled in consciously exaggerating his public image. Hopkins Hopkins
 |
| Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh |
The flip side to the eccentric Hitchcock is his
down-to-earth, practical wife Alma. Alma
was, by all accounts, an incredibly astute and talented woman, but here she has
the thankless role of being saddled with the task of not only trying to
convince her husband not to make ‘Psycho’,
but also of flirting with the idea of having an affair with a slick and slimy
Hollywood scumbag. It’s a testament to
just how good Mirren is that despite this she keeps us rooting for Alma
The ups and downs of the Hitchcock marriage
provide much of the drama, which means that the production of ‘Psycho’ is treated as more of a backdrop. This focus is frustrating because the film is
at its best when we’re delving into how Hitchcock’s production methods and
interactions with cast and crew. Janet
Leigh and Anthony Perkins are compellingly played by Scarlett Johansson and
James D’Arcy, but sadly we don’t get to see too much of them. The film is at its best when we watch
Hitchcock at work in the studio, and realise we’re watching cinematic history
being made. Watching iconic scenes take
shape sends a shiver up your spine, most notably when we follow a length of steaming black
rubber pipe that snakes sinisterly through the set, abruptly terminating in a
gleaming silver shower head.
All of this imagery is ominously effective,
perhaps too effective as I found
myself wishing I was watching ‘Psycho’
instead. ‘Hitchcock’ is a perfectly
serviceable and fun film and director Sacha Gervasi has successfully made the
leap from documentary to dramatic film-making.
The problem is that the psychology of Alfred Hitchcock has been already
been covered much more comprehensively in film by the man himself in ‘Vertigo’ and indeed, in ‘Psycho’.
Perhaps the best you can say about ‘Hitchcock’ is that it’s an excellent
encouragement to go and watch some classic cinema.
*** / *****
'Hitchcock' is on general release from 8th February.
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