Todd Phillips' approach to part two of his surprise comedy smash The Hangover (2009) is that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The original made bona fide stars out of its lead trio and grossed half a billion dollars in the process, so a sequel was always going to be on the cards. The simple formula of the hapless heroes waking up from a stag night of drink, drugs and debauchery to find the groom missing and a variety of clues lying around to help them work out just what the hell happened felt fresh, and the natural charisma of its stars, particularly Zach Galifianakis, made for a hilarious experience.
By sticking to the formula, Phillips has forced himself to a corner where the details have to bigger and more outlandish. Instead of Vegas, Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Galifianakis) are in Thailand to celebrate Stu's upcoming wedding to Lauren (Jamie Chung). After a planned quiet night on the beach with a beer and marshmallows, they wake up in a grimy hotel room in Bangkok with no memory of the night before and inexplicably in the presence of gangster Mr. Chow (Ken Jeung) from the first film. When Chow seemingly overdoses on cocaine, they are left to piece things together themselves.
If this was a stand-alone movie without the existence of its predecessor, then this probably would have been a winner. While its frequently goes overboard with the crass humour, its consistently amusing without succeeding in being quite so laugh-out-loud as the first movie, thanks mainly again to Galifianakis, whose man-child Alan is the funniest aspect of the film. Yet while his naivety and plain stupidity was so endearing in the original, the sequel also takes Alan to increasingly dark places. Here, he is not so much social inept but dangerously insane to the point that he becomes occasionally outright unlikeable.
And this is the main issue - replacing charm and goofiness with extreme humour. Stu was missing a tooth in the first film, but this time he wakes up with a Mike Tyson tribal tattoo on his face. Rather than Tyson's tiger, we have a chain-smoking drug-mule monkey. Rather than finding Doug (Justin Bartha) vanished, they lose Lauren's prodigal younger brother Teddy (Mason Lee), to which the only clue to his participation is his severed finger. And having previously married a stripper, Stu discovers that - in the most uncomfortably unfunny scene - he has been sodomised by a ladyboy. Add to the mix a sub-plot involving gangster Kingsley (Paul Giamatti) and his search for Chow, the film spends too much time away from the hapless threesome's interplay in favour of watching their reactions to a variety of cruel situations.
N.W.A.'s seminal 1988 hit Fuck tha Police should now be, as well as a great song, a window into a darker, more brutal past that we can now look back at on in disbelief. Like Billie Holiday's haunting Strange Fruit and Bob Marley's Buffalo Soldier, the record paints an uncomfortable picture of the treatment of black people, specifically, in N.W.A.'s case, the willingness of police officers to beat on any young black teenager that happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sadly, with almost daily reports of police brutality still occurring in America, Fuck tha Police is just as relevant as ever, and F. Gary Gray's Straight Outta Compton - the story of N.W.A. - pulses with the same anger and energy.
Even though it runs at just shy of three hours, Straight Outta Compton is forced to cram in a lot of incident from the ten-year period it covers, but still maintains its attention to detail throughout. Beginning in a Compton brimming with racial and gang tension, a young Andre "Dr. Dre" Young (Corey Hawkins), O'Shea "Ice Cube" Jackson (played by Cube's real-life song, O'Shea Jackson Jr.) and Antoine "DJ Yella" Carraby (Neil Brown Jr.) bring the house down with a performance of Gangsta Gangsta, much to the dislike of the club owner who disapproves of their aggressive style and confrontational lyrics. Seeking money to record, Dre turns to gang members Eric "Eazy-E" Wright (Jason Mitchell) and Lorenzo "MC Ren" Patterson (Aldis Hodge) for a cash injection, and following the release of hit Boyz-N-The-Hood, the Niggaz With Attitude are approached by manager Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti).
What follows is the familiar biopic formula frothing at the brim with enough in-fighting, doomed business relationships, personal conflict and artistic milestones to fill twenty stand-alone documentaries. But Gray infuses the film with such ferocity and authenticity that its easy to forgive the films misgivings and be utterly enthralled by almost every scene. The live performances especially - and there are many - are utterly thrilling. Bolstered by the sheer raw brilliance of N.W.A.'s music and a terrific ensemble who all share an uncanny resemblance to their real-life counterparts (obviously in Jackson Jr.'s case), the film truly comes alive in these moments, whether it be in the concert hall or the recording studio. When the group defy Detroit police with a literal middle finger and belt out the song they were warned not to play, you feel like standing up and chanting with the crowd as the police swarm the stage.
The first half of Straight Outta Compton is the best, as the gang rise to fame and speak out against police brutality (the beating of Rodney King being the breaking point). Darkness looms and is teased with the presence of ex-con-turned-producer Suge Knight (played a terrifying R. Marcos Taylor) and Cube's increasing unease with Eazy E's blossoming business relationship with Heller. As Knight lays seeds of doubt in Dre's mind, everyone apart from Eazy seems to be getting screwed out of their money. The film strides along with swagger and attitude, with highlights including Eazy's crack deal gone slight awry in the opening scene and a one-shot tour of the band's hotel room as armed strangers come a-knocking.
The film then gives way to some slightly overwrought sentiment and a who's who of the 90's West Coast rappers. Snoop Dogg (Keith Stanfield) and 2Pac (Marcc Rose) show up for no reason whatsoever, and Eazy begins his rapid descent to an early death of AIDS in some not-so-subtle scenes depicting the deterioration of his health . A end credits montage seemingly celebrating the wealth of Dre and Cube as well reminding us of some of the not-so-great things they've done over the years (Dre was responsible for 50 Cent after all) also leaves a bad taste in the mouth. These things stop it from being great, but this is still one of the best movies I've seen this year. It's best to let yourself get swept up in 90's nostalgia, savour the fantastic music (unless you're a rap Nazi), and watch the world only now seen in fuzzy music videos feel alive once again.
If Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man trilogy (2002-2007) had never existed, Marc Webb's arguably unnecessary reboot The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) would have been a near-perfect introduction to the cocky web-slinger. Andrew Garfield, one the most intriguing young actors around, and Emma Stone, that old-school sassy and husky-voiced beauty who effortlessly charmed in Easy A (2010), were an almost dream couple, and their romantic scenes sparkled with chemistry. But when Garfield put on his costume and went spinning webs across the city, the film owed everything to Raimi's eye for crazy, energetic camera-work, and failed to thrill enough as a re-imagining in it's own right. Raimi's influence seemed unshakeable.
Yet the film was a success, and two years later we have a sequel. The story moves on and Peter Parker (Garfield) has grown too, though he is still caught up in a reluctant relationship with Gwen Stacy (Stone), having been warned by her dying father at the end of the last movie to leave her out of his superhero business. After apprehending a criminal named Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti) who was trying to run away with some plutonium vials, he saves nervous young Oscorp worker Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx), who becomes infatuated with Spider-Man, believing them to have a special friendship. Parker's old friend and Oscorp inheritor Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) is also back in town, and learns that his dying father's illness is hereditary.
With the first having shared so much with the original trilogy, it's surprising that Webb and the writers have made the same mistakes as the one that killed Raimi's baby in it's tracks. Thankfully, there's no emo Peter Parker dance scene, but there is an over-abundance of villains. Okay, Giamatti's Rhino barely registers (thankfully), but Jamie Foxx's Electro and DeHaan's emerging Green Goblin battle for screen time, and DeHaan is far too exciting an actor to feel like he's being squeezed in. Having watched Marvel's Avengers dominate the box-office, Sony are clearly starting to set-up something bigger, but they do so at the expense of the film at hand.
In fact, there's an over-abundance of everything. With a hefty running time of 140 minutes, the amount going on in the film should justify it's length. But Parker spends most of his time being angry at his parents for being dead, similar to the angst done better last time around, and his plucky conversations with on-off girlfriend Gwen soon loose their charm and quickly become annoying. The action scenes, although they look beautiful in hi-definition as Electro causes havoc, suffer from seen-it-all-before syndrome, and some of the dialogue spouted by Giamatti especially, caused me to worry that Joel Schumacher had perched his arse back on the director's chair. It's sporadically fun but mainly just a bore, but I fully expect a third instalment to turn up in two year's time.
Practically neglected entirely by cinema, it seems that America is finally holding its hands up in the air; ready to face its utterly barbaric history surrounding the kidnapping of black Africans and the introduction of slavery. Last year saw Quentin Tarantino deliver a sporadically entertaining yet hardly historically accurate depiction of slavery and plantation owners in Django Unchained, but British director Steve McQueen has delivered an unflinching, heartbreaking true story in 12 Years a Slave, an account of the experiences of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a freeman living in American who is kidnapped, taken from his wife and children, and sold into slavery.
After a conflict with a sadistic overseer (Paul Dano), Northup is passed on by gentle plantation owner Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), into the hands of the cruel Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender). There he finds himself caught up in a conflict between Epps' wife (Sarah Paulson) and fellow slave Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o). Patsey is treated cruelly by Mistress Epps simply because her husband desires her sexually, and Patsey pleads with Northup to end her life. Although coming from an educated background, and being especially skilled with a violin, Northup keeps his past a freeman quiet. But when chance leads to an encounter with Canadian abolitionist Bass (Brad Pitt), Northup sees a chance to communicate with his family back in New York.
For anyone familiar with the work of Steve McQueen, there is no doubting that 12 Years a Slave is distinctly his. His previous films Hunger (2008) and Shame (2011) can be described as works of high art, and while 12 Years a Slave features the long, haunting takes and moments of stillness that McQueen is known for, it is more recognisable as a mainstream film. I certainly don't mean that as a negative, as, given the subject matter, McQueen has to be extremely delicate with not allowing his own artistic preferences to overshadow the gravity of the story. But the film is surprisingly, yet thankfully, unsentimental. There's no big chest-beating moment of defiance or Oscar-grabbing monologues, and in fact we don't really get to know Northup as much as we really should.
Northup plays the role of protagonist (the film is based on his written account), but this is just one man. His story was one of a precious few to come out of slavery with a 'happy' ending, and 12 Years A Slave extends its focus to the experiences of the majority of slaves, giving the audience a first-hand experience of what it was like to live in this time. In a key scene, Northup stands silent as the other workers sing, and as the realisation of his situation hits home, he defiantly joins in. Patsey's story, if anything, is the more heartbreaking, caught between a drunken, lusty maniac and his contemptuous, jealous wife. In the film's most powerful scene, Epps catches her on the way back from another plantation. When he asks where she has been, she holds up a bar of soap. Mistress Epps won't let her wash. So with his wife encouraging him, he whips Patsey until her back is near unrecognisable. It's one of the most horrendous moments I've ever seen on screen, and it's all caught in one unflinching take.
The performances are universally excellent. Fassbender gets the easier role as the scowling sadist, but it is his character's Christian justification for slavery that most disturbs. Ejiofor is quietly effective in an unshowy role, but it is Nyong'o and Paulson that stand out as two women on completely opposite sides of the social spectrum. When the movie ends, although it climaxes with Northup uniting with his family, I had a strange feeling of dissatisfaction. I realised that this is why 12 Years a Slave is so powerful, as although it offers a kind resolution to a character that suffers an awful amount throughout, there's still the knowledge that this is one man amongst millions, that there has been no real justice for the perpetrators of this barbarism. As the footnotes inform us, Northup's capturers were never punished either, as it wasn't law for Northup to testify against them. It's a lot to stomach, but this is devastating, important cinema.
In the opening credits of David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, the bottom half of the screen gets increasing doused with "action" art, the Jackson Pollack drippings of various coloured paints, an American artistic icon, whose paintings fetch millions of dollars at auction, are the symbols of opulence, and social status, to that one percent of the West's population who are inconceivably rich - those financial elite that the worlds ninety-nine percent aim their contemporary anger at. Whilst this topical subject matter could well have been wholly conceived after the 2008 economic crash, but it is in fact adapted (by Cronenberg himself) from the 2003 novel by Dom DeLillo. (But then, these suited elites have been targeted hate figures for some time, but with the crash came hard evidence of their financial greed - and crimes for that matter.) In Cosmopolis, the protagonist is Eric (Robert Pattinson), a billionaire asset manager, whose cold, detachment from reality, his alienation a product of his corporate exclusivity, operates his working life (and extra-curricula) from the inside of his technologically advanced limousine.
To the outside world, Eric is extraneous, but his interior world, the back of the limo, with its screens, curves and luminous sheen, reflect that consumerist fetishisation of technology - reminiscent of those chrome engines, erotically cleaned and poured over in Kenneth Anger's Kustom Kar Kommandos (1970). Eric occupies this space for much of the film, a hermetically sealed protector from the real world (customised so no sound can enter), where he lets in colleagues, friends, and a doctor for one-on-one conversation. It is this erotic space, where he communicates, fucks, and destroys lives, a space gleaming with technical-sexuality, is like a womb, the ultimate space of protection. In the few scenes exterior to the limo, - such as his encounters with his wife in eating establishments - the occupants are rarely heard, their insignificance obvious for the character.
But, like Joseph Conrad's Charles Marlow in 'Heart of Darkness', Eric is on an odyssey into the dark, and an apocalyptic journey into destruction and madness. But unlike Marlow, Eric's is a self inflicted destruction. This duality manifests itself symbolically, he is skewed, divided and unbalanced; his hair is only cut on one side, he shoots a hole in his left hand, and the visiting doctor advises Eric that his prostate is asymmetrical. The odyssey - his literal journey across Manhatten - is held up in traffic, a busy day that sees the President of the United States visiting the city, the funeral of a rap star, and an anti-capitalist "riot". Parallel to the increasing binary characteristics, Eric's detached wishes are often denied. In one scene he is informed of the death of his favourite rap star, but is disappointed that he died of natural causes, instead of a gun shot - a media-friendly representation. Juliette Binoche, Eric's art consultant, turns down a request (whilst copulating) to purchase an entire collection of Mark Rothko paintings, along with the space they occupy - an arrogance of ownership. Throughout the passage of Eric's car, he loses billions of dollars, his advisers philosophically, but dispassionately discussing these complex calculations and consequences.
In an early scene (and a quote from Zbigniew Herbert's poem 'Report from the Besieged City' at the start of the film), Eric proposes a fantasy future of finance where the rat becomes the worlds currency. In a restaurant, two anarchist protesters storm in holding rats by their tales, declaring "A spectre is haunting the world", before hurtling the rats at the patrons. That spectre is of course capitalism; the limo is grafittied by the protesters, Eric cocooned in perfect anonymity, but this is simply another pseudo-delight to the destructive dimensions of Eric. He knows he walks to danger, - he created it himself - a manifestation of possible psychosomatic invention? like American Psycho's (2000) Patrick Bateman, another satire on the financial elite, but one in which he is internally, mentally imploding, instead of externalising violence into a fantasy of psychotic whim. Here, Paul Giamatti's disgruntled forgotten work colleague, becomes a potential source of ultimate destruction, or he may simply be a manifestation of his deteriorating psyche.
However, unlike the sharp satirical whit of American Psycho, Cosmopolis is simply too cold, it's characters without depth. But then this could also be a purposeful emptiness. For Cronenberg, it is a return to that clinical aesthetic, and gaunt characterisation of Crash (1996) and eXistenZ (1999), but is too surreal in terms of its non-narrative structure to fundamentally clarify the sardonic elements that could have been so much more interesting. It is a very well made film, as you would expect from Cronenberg, his compositions and its movements and segues are beautifully constructed, but this odyssey into quasi-madness simply didn't enlighten me, or excite me in the way its central idea could well have, and simply is not cohesive enough to produce any major dramatic tension. As with the vacuous, clinical aesthetic of the film, it left me a little cold.
In the height of the run-in for the Democratic Presidential candidate, young campaign manager Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), who is working for Governer of Pennsylvania Mike Morris (George Clooney), is called for a meeting by rival campaigner Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti) who attempts to convince him to jump ship. Meyers refuses, but fails to tell his boss Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), only to admit it to him later. Furious at the lack of trust now between the two, Zara fires Meyers, who furiously tries to join the rival team. During this time, Meyers has been romancing intern Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood), who may just harbour a secret of his own. Over the course of the film, Meyers learns the true nature of politics, and just what it takes to survive in the business.
There are three things that cannot be faulted with this film - that is the stellar acting by a multi-talented cast, the sharp script, and Clooney's direction. Gosling is quickly becoming Hollywood's favourite A-lister (even though I've been championing him for years!), combining good looks, charm, and a huge acting talent. 2011 was good to him, with this film, and the year's sleeper hit, Drive, catapulting him to stardom. The reliable supporting cast - Giamatti, Hoffman, Clooney, Wood, Jeffrey Wright and Marisa Tomei - all prove effective in their roles. The script, by Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon, and Clooney himself, packs a lot into its feature running time, but it keeps things rather tense and suitably fierce. And Clooney, who is quickly becoming a hugely confident director, keeps the style of the film very much that of the political thrillers of the 1970's. Not to say he is a homage director, but he clearly takes his styles from his peers. Given that America's finest cinematic era was the 70's, there's certainly nothing wrong with taking its influences from it.
Yet, given all the style and fine acting on display, The Ides of March seems rather pointless. It is clearly depicting the corruption of the self through politics as Gosling evolves from naive and passionate wunderkid, to morally dubious game-player, though it's nothing that has been seen before. So politics corrupts? No shit. A shame then, as I wanted to really like this film, and I suppose I did, but ultimately it left me yearning for more, and I felt the film would have been more effective as a mini-series, giving time to breathe life into its characters between the moments of back-stabbing and shady meetings. It's undoubtedly extremely well made and well-intentioned, but rather hollow. Clooney, however, still remains a director of promise, and I will still be eager to watch whatever he directs next.
By sticking to the formula, Phillips has forced himself to a corner where the details have to bigger and more outlandish. Instead of Vegas, Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Galifianakis) are in Thailand to celebrate Stu's upcoming wedding to Lauren (Jamie Chung). After a planned quiet night on the beach with a beer and marshmallows, they wake up in a grimy hotel room in Bangkok with no memory of the night before and inexplicably in the presence of gangster Mr. Chow (Ken Jeung) from the first film. When Chow seemingly overdoses on cocaine, they are left to piece things together themselves.
