Southpaw ***

The hype surrounding Antoine Fuqua’s boxing movie has been extraordinary ever since publicity shots of Jake Gyllenhaal’s drastic physical transformation were released earlier this year.

The result is somewhat less impressive; it’s an unoriginal redemption story; pumped-up, flashy and overly sentimental.

Gyllenhaal plays Billy Hope, the world light-heavyweight champion – a dedicated boxer and committed husband and father. After attending a charity event with his wife(Rachel McAdams) Billy is taunted by an upstart fighter which leads to a brawl and an accidental shoot-out in the hotel lobby. Things get worse and after turning to drink and drugs, his life spirals out of control until he joins a gym run by Titus Willis (Forest Whitaker) – Billy tries to convince Whitaker’s wise-mentor character to train him and turn his life around.

The narrative arc of a boxing or fighting movie is very well-worn and it’s not just that Fuqua is aware of the genre conventions, he actively doesn’t want to do anything adventurous with them. It's strikingly shot - the frame glimmers with blood,sweat and dazzling floodlights - and occasionally the film approaches an interesting thematic idea - the idea being that Hope is a man without any emotional control, he is full of rage and pathos but the only way he can beat his nemesis is to transcend this pain and loss. But the film always seems to circumvent any depth in favor of a nonsensical 'revenge without vengeance' subtext.

The problem is largely due to the empty melodrama that surrounds the fight sequences. In Raging Bull it seemed as though the drama was in a state of permanent tension and aggression whether Ray LaMotta was in the ring or at home. Southpaw has an unsatisfyingly soft and mawkish centre partly mitigated by its central performances – all of which are strong.

Self/Less(2015)**

Self/Less, or more appropriately, Wit/Less is an identity switching sci-fi drama starring Ben Kingsley as an ailing billionaire property tycoon called Damien Hale. In need of a solution to save his dying body and preserve his brilliant mind, Hale seeks out a futuristic treatment whereby his consciousness is implanted into a younger, fitter body – this being Ryan Reynolds – but is the body just a hollow vessel grown in a lab or does it have memories of its own?

Mistaken identity and conspiracy are well-worn science fiction ideas drawn most notably from Philip K. Dick’s venerable canon of work, but Tarsem Singh’s picture instead seems to be reworking riffs from already rehashed movies such as The Island(2005), The Butterfly Effect(2004) and Unknown(2011) as opposed to something like John Woo’s superior identity thriller Face/Off(1997) or Spielberg's Minority Report(2002). What begins with an enjoyable body-shock premise – which initially sees Hale using his newly acquired health and physical allure to party and attract girls – after the first reel loses any sense of ingenuity in favour of a bland sub-Bourne chase narrative. Ben Kingsley adds presence and gravitas to the surrounding emptiness of the drama and Ryan Reynolds tries hard with the material he is given, but the end result is an unnecessarily long and ludicrous one.

Testament of Youth(2015) ***

Based on the memoirs of writer and feminist Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth was a highly acclaimed, important and tragic account of the impact of The First World War. While much of the war literature at the time was dominated by male voices – such as war poets; Sassoon, Graves, Kipling and Edward Thomas – Vera Brittian’s powerful memoirs, published in 1933, provided a revolutionary female perspective that would become the most essential and radical piece of feminist war literature for years to come.

In James Kent’s film, Alicia Vikander plays Vera Brittain, a young woman determined to pursue education and overcome the social limitations of being female at the time. Studying for her entrance exam, she plans to read English at Somerville College at Oxford – to the reluctance of her father who is troubled by the expense, but ironically, and frivolously, buys her a piano with the intent that she simply stays at home and plays it. Vera has other plans, and her parents perhaps underestimate her drive, intelligence and ability to succeed. 

The drama centres around Brittain, her brother Edward(Taron Egerton), Roland Leighton(Kit Harrington) and Victor, played by Colin Morgan – all giving engrossing and sensitive performances. Vikander in particular is excellent; playing Brittain with fragility but also understated strength and self-belief – it’s a performance that truly draws you in. 

However, her time at Oxford does not go smoothly; after a complicated relationship develops between Vera and Roland, war breaks out and all three men are called up to serve on the front lines in France. Vera subsequently becomes more and more exposed to the horrors of war and subsequently abandons her education to volunteer as a nurse.

James Kent’s film is emotionally charged, but the most nuanced moments are the most affecting. There’s a scene in which Vera’s father, played well if used only peripherally within in the drama by Dominic West, sees his son Edward off on the train as he leaves for the western front. Vera thinks she sees her father looking at a train timetable, but realises that he’s trying to mask the fact that he is overwhelmed with emotion – it’s an incidental scene that illustrates more about the tragedy, torment and loss in war than many of the more obviously overwrought sections of the film try to accomplish.

In many ways it’s hard to fault Testament of Youth because it is so clearly made with good intentions – it’s directed with consideration and precision, detail and care – but it’s all too well-mannered; a little too respectful, a little too polite and safe. Kent knows how to compose a striking image on-screen and gets strong performances from his actors, but it’s all too polished, too refined and occasionally, too sanitised.  

Gone Girl(2014)

****

In the late eighties and nighties, Michael Douglas was the go-to star for portraying the victimised man.  Both Fatal Attraction(1987) and Disclosure(1994) explored a subversion of traditional gender roles – the central male characters at the mercy of powerful, intelligent and manipulative women; masculine impulses, both sexual and professional, are punished by the cunning femme-fatal antagonists.  

David Fincher’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is a thriller of mind games and manipulation. Drawing interestingly from his own canon of work, there are echoes of the procedural style of Zodiac(2007) and the twisted game-playing narrative of Se7en(1995), but his trademark acuity and attention to detail seems more precise and glacial than ever before. Rosmand Pike plays Amy, the inspiration for “Amazing Amy” – the central character in her parent’s successful line of children’s books; married to Nick Dunne,(Ben Affleck) a generic, if sleazy, American husband who runs a bar with significant financial support from his wife. Then Amy goes missing from the family home under strange circumstances – furniture knocked over, traces of blood in the kitchen – police speculation points to homicide. At the same time another narrative thread plays out involving Amy’s diary entries which run parallel with the central story.

The film proceeds to set up an investigation plot into what actually happened to “Amazing Amy” but what initially appears to be a dark, hard-edged thriller becomes increasingly bizarre and satirical.

Gone Girl explores the distinction between fiction and reality, but more importantly, the fear of marriage; the pressure of expectation and the pursuit for the appearance of perfection.  Flynn’s screenplay meticulously presents these ideas but the significant focus is upon the roles played in married life - it is this idea which is most interesting. Amy is initially perceived as the victim and Nick the perpetrator but these roles are constantly reversed and transformed throughout the drama, and running through it, is an intelligent satire on TV news that sets up Nick as a symbol for man-hate and abusive husbands. Rosmand Pike gives her strongest performance to date; capturing Amy’s complexly mercurial, calculating, deranged character with an icy execution. 

The film then takes an unusual generic shift from serious crime thriller into overcooked, erotic thriller-cum-exploitation potboiler. In one scene Fincher not only nods towards Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas and recreates an explosively violent moment that could have been drawn almost directly from Basic Instinct(1992). In the end Gone Girl becomes less of an intense thematic exploration into marital dysfunction and dishonesty and instead lurches into the realms of enjoyable exploitation film-making – it is an intensely riveting and atmospheric drama.

Arbitrage

****

Richard Gere plays affluent hedge-fund manager Robert Miller, balancing an apparently thriving business with an idyllic family life – he has everything. But as the drama unfolds, Miller’s glittering billion-dollar existence appears to be no more than a handsome surface for underlying corruption. 

Nicholas Jarecki directs his debut feature with an appropriately brisk, meretricious sheen; it’s slickly put together, just as the central character is, apparently, well put together. Gere gives his best performance – trading on his natural charisma, he manages to cleverly subvert his superficial charm to the point were you can’t help but be drawn into the convoluted web of duplicity. Tim Roth on the other hand plays a detective with deep contempt for the avaricious commercial circle that Gere’s character moves within, but the film ultimately calls into question whether corruption in fact lies on both sides of the same coin.

There are echoes of Gordan Gekko in Robert Miller; Susan Sarandon(playing Gere’s onscreen wife) asks, “how much money do we need?” Just as Bud Fox wanted to know of Gekko what “his number” is...The answer? In this decadent world of high finance, nothing is ever enough. There are other aspects of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street that are drawn upon, such as the ever prescient “greed is good” money corrupts adage, but Jarecki is less interested in the zeitgeist and more absorbed by the drama. And absorbing, it is.

Nightcrawler ****

Set within the neon-lit nocturnal backdrop of LA, Jake Gyllenhaal gives a brilliant performance as Lou Bloom, a creepy insomniac in search of a job. After witnessing a TV news crew swarming a burning car wreck, Bloom buys a video camera and drives around as a freelance “nightcrawler” in search of crime footage to sell to news corporations.

Gyllenhaal’s 30-pound weight loss(less drastic than Christian Bale’s emaciated frame in The Machinist(2004), but certainly intended for a similar psychological effect) gives him a gaunt, manic expression – he is a compelling contradiction; a loner, insect-like and volatile, yet driven and ambitious, often found spouting clichéd corporate jargon.

Centrally, Nightcrawler is an intelligent satire on sensational journalism. Both dark in theme and colour palette, the film depicts an amoral and fetishized obsession with violent imagery in the media. When Lou visits a local station, he meets the editor(Rene Russo) who shows an interest in his apparent flair for capturing sordid images; her station’s precept being “a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut”.

As the narrative unfolds, newsgathering methods become increasingly extreme. The compulsion for finding more intensely graphic content is typified by the voyeuristic extreme camera close-up – where real life, or more aptly, real death is reduced to dramatization. Screenwriter-turned-director Dan Gilroy masterfully engages with these themes, placing Nightcrawler within a gritty, Michael Mann-esque, neo-noir hyper-reality. Riz Ahmed gives a very strong supporting performance as Lou’s assistant who gets inadvertently entangled in the central character’s morbid occupation whilst Rene Russo’s Nina is tough and uncompromising, desperately trying to save her failing network.

Gilroy’s picture is thoroughly enthralling and distinctive and even the car chase set piece finale - which may only be there to satisfy the broad action genre fans - is excitingly executed. Nightcrawler remains a lean, twisted and original thriller.

Black Sea **** Kevin Macdonald helms this tough, skillfully-made submarine thriller starring Jude Law; plunging the depths of the human struggle.

Jude Law plays Robinson, a marine salvage worker, estranged from his family and facing imminent redundancy. Still compelled to provide, Robinson agrees to helm one final salvage mission on an old ex-soviet (Foxtrot-class) submarine in search of a wrecked U-boat full of Nazi treasure. Assembling a team of craggy-looking, pugnacious ex-mariners from Britain and Russia, they agree to split the value of the lucrative haul between them – but as the sub plunges deeper and deeper into the dark abyss of the Black Sea, greed and the fear of death become deadly compounds to a catalyst of tension and insanity amongst the crew.

Macdonald’s film is most effective when it trades on the generic conventions of the ‘submarine film’ – a subgenre that falls somewhere between a high-tension pressure cooker drama and science-fiction – the vast emptiness of the ocean often echoes an environment as inhospitable as the blankness of space. Macdonald masterfully invokes a dark, mephitic, claustrophobic environment where the state of unease stems from the desperation of men being not only trapped in a void but also appearing to be void-like individuals themselves – down-and-out and hopeless – the quest for treasure almost replacing their purpose of existence. Jude Law gives an absorbing and visceral central performance and while his attempt at the Aberdeen accent is occasionally dubious, it is a character detail that manages to fit aptly against Robinson’s granite-hard persona. Supporting performances from Ben Mendelsohn and Michael Smiley also do well to add danger and realism to the proceedings.

Dennis Kelly’s script is tough and efficient but not entirely watertight; the narrative uses ellipsis to omit some of the more unbelievable or “difficult to explain” aspects in the story and while the moments of violence are explosive and dramatic, the character motives are less probable and should be understood more as a trope associated with the horror-inflected style of the piece. 

Occasionally reminiscent of Joe Carnahan’s human endurance picture, The Grey(2011) ,Black Sea manages to draw us into an emotional subtext amidst the frenetic action sequences;  Robinson’s existential crisis of masculinity is centrally engaging and transforms the narrative into something that is more profound and transcendent than its thriller conventions might suggest.

Her

***

The sci-fi genre has explored time and again the relationship between humans and technology. In Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner,(1982) Deckard falls for a replicant robot, Steven Soderbergh’s brilliant remake of Solaris(2002) focused on Chris Kelvin’s conflicted relationship with a synthetic apparition of his dead wife whilst Steven Spielberg’s A.I Artificial Intelligence(2001) had a robotic child programmed to love its adoptive parents. Spike Jonze’s Her is in many ways a more grounded film, dealing with aspects of technology that seem relatively contemporary - the Apple voice command of Siri is perhaps the most familiar touchstone. Joaquin Phoenix gives a strong performance as Theodore Twombly; a lonely, introverted writer at BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com – a company that writes personalised love letters for couples who lack the ability to communicate affection to their other halves. Twombly’s job is clearly a shorthand for demonstrating that the society he lives in is disconnected emotionally and depersonalised by technology.

However, when Theodore updates his state-of-the-art computer operating system, he realises that it has the capacity to learn about him and even talk to him. His life changes when he chooses a female voice command called Samantha(voice performed by Scarlett Johannsson) to organise his life and he begins to fall for ‘her’.  Initially the film is effective in setting up the sense of isolation in Twombly’s life through his lack of human contact; his relationship with a cutesy yet foulmouthed video game character, his awkwardly plutonic friendship with his co-worker(Amy Adams) and an embarrassing phone-sex encounter that frighteningly echoes the way physical interactions seem to be playing out in the 21^st century.

The film exists in a strange,‘hip', utopia of the avid Apple product consumer, where the men of this future wear high-waist trousers and geek-chic glasses – an aesthetic which works on a satirical level, but you get the feeling that Jonze is taking all this a little too seriously. This science-fiction construct is shot through a meritoriously soft-focus lens making everything on screen seem both pleasing to the eye and kind of plastic-y at the same time – this having the effect of blurring the perceptions of reality and numbing physicality within a strange dreamlike world.

The relationship between Theodore and Samantha is largely compelling and the occasions where he attempts to create more tangible, sensory, meaningful connections to bring her into the real world – taking her on dates via his smartphone, letting her speak to his friends – are oddly captivating. Her sometimes echoes Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer(2009) in its dreamy, indie, slightly annoying offbeat tone and there are other times when it has the genuine sincerity and sensitivity of, for example, Lars and the Real Girl(2007) – a film where Ryan Gosling’s character attempts to humanise a blow-up sex doll. At best the film is impactful in portraying the sensory and sensual barriers between a man-machine relationship, but the delicacy of the performances and the drama is at times lost within an overwrought and overripe silliness mixed with some clichéd romantic ideas. The ending is a rom-com cop-out, but Her is nevertheless, a unique and intriguing watch.

The Hunting Party – Linkin Park

***

Linkin Park's recent albums have seen the band attempting to reimagine their sound. A Thousand Suns(2010) conflated modern electro-pop with apocalyptic-political subject matter and Living Things(2012) was a more refined, but less interesting follow-up. Within these two experimental projects, the band seem to have ended up – either intentionally or unintentionally – writing music for a much broader, mainstream audience. The Hunting Party brings in some of the visceral modern-rock energy and anger that totally suffused their early nu-metal sound – even if it isn’t an entirely faithful return to form.

Opener Keys to the Kingdom is the heaviest thing they’ve done. The juxtaposition of Chester Bennington’s corrosive screaming and the pensive release of Mike Shinoda’s alt-pop infused verses make these dissonant parts of the song, not so much jar, as sonically collide together. The album sustains this feeling of collision and conflict pretty consistently - it's almost a metaphor for the way the band is fighting to retain the signature ferocity of their debut, Hybrid Theory, and still preserve the graceful melodic sensibility of their recent work.

The guest appearances offer varying results; Page Hamilton is effective on All for Nothing and legendary hip-hop MC, Rakim, adds an unexpected menace to the breakdown of Guilty all the Same. But Daron Malakian’s (System of a Down) presence on Rebellion and Tom Morello’s contribution on Drawbar are not nearly as distinctive or memorable as they should have been.

Although the energy and passion of The Hunting Party is unquestionable, the album doesn’t always hang together. Although the more shambolic moments are clearly a by-product of its explosive spirit, sometimes the entire album threatens to collapse in a heap. Wastelands, which comes in at the halfway point, hoists the album into place – it’s simply constructed with a great rap verse and rock chorus, reminiscent of Hybrid Theory and Meteora's schizophrenic

sound and structure. 

It is also interesting to observe how Linkin Park’s attitude towards subject matter has evolved. Their first two albums repeatedly refer to the motif of the self within the self – a Jekyll and Hyde complex that was constantly being grappled with. Lines such as; “you’ve become a part of me”/“the very worst part of you is me”/“the face inside is right beneath the skin” convey a kind of Freudian id and ego conception of the human personality – were the narrative voices in those early LP songs fought against the personification of their own dark, twisted thoughts. As time has passed the lyrics have become far more externalised and focus instead on man’s impact on the world – their anger is less angst-ridden and more concerned with the futility and suffering that exists within the dystopian-like world we live in – “the wastelands of today”. 

The Counsellor ** Despite the A-list cast and Ridley Scott’s fervent direction, Cormac McCarthy’s script leaves a lot to be desired in this overdressed drug-revenge movie.

Ridley Scott’s quasi-philosophical drug thriller sees Michael Fassbender as a slick lawyer and negotiator, only ever referred to as the titular “counsellor”. Whilst planning new business ventures with his zany associate Reiner, (played by Javier Bardem) The Counsellor becomes interested in a Mexican drug deal that promises to yield massive profit through a contact called Westray(Brad Pitt) – however the deal goes horribly wrong.

Scott’s picture may be lavishly dressed, but it is a relatively simplistic exploitation-movie setup mired by McCarthy’s over-embellished pseudo-existential dialogue. Characters say lines as turgid and insipidly enigmatic as; “are you really that cold?”, “the truth has no temperature” and there is arch talk about “the stone’s endless destiny, is that not the meaning of adornment?’ during a protracted discussion about engagement rings.

The explosive violence conflated with the overcharged sexual content should be more entertaining and daring than it actually is; it's surprising how a film that features a motorised garrotting device and Cameron Diaz having sex with a car manages to be quite so boring. Michael Fassbender in his best moments manages to convey the hollowed-out nature of his character convincingly and the likes of Bardem and Pitt ham it up as best they can in their sub-Tarantino outfits. Yet the mood of the piece is constantly trampled on by the script’s endlessly inert philosophising about drugs and death and fate – disappointing.

Edge of Tomorrow - Tom Cruise's return to sci-fi sees him stuck in a narrative device, but director Doug Liman gives us more to chew on in this blockbuster epic. ***

Doug Liman’s new movie is yet another science-fiction story that sees humans pitted against an alien invasion. Based on the novel by fiction and fantasy writer Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Edge of Tomorrow stars Tom Cruise as Major William Cage, a PR man spinning positive military propaganda about the war against the extra-terrestrials. However, after a meeting with General Brigham,(Brendan Gleeson) Cage is ordered to fight as a soldier on the front line. When he refuses to fight, Cage is forcibly sent to into battle and dropped headfirst into alien-D-Day-CGI carnage only to get stuck in a cosmic time loop in which he lives the same day of fighting over and over again - like a live-action video game where he ‘respawns’ in exactly the same place every time he dies.

Cruise’s role is more interesting than one would expect from this kind of blockbuster fare – Cage isn’t a hero, he’s a slimy, superficial, cowardly character and it is within these duplicitous qualities that Cruise has channelled his finest work in Michael Mann’s Collateral and P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia.

Nearly every review has mentioned Groundhog Day as Liman’s central touchstone device for describing how the time looping scenario works and indeed there is a moment where Tom Cruise says “what day is it?” and you almost expect Chris Elliot to jump out and say “it’s time to film the groundhog!” Furthermore, there are moments that derive Groundhog Day's similar strain of black humour from the fact that the central character dies incessantly in comical accidents.  However, when Emily Blunt's poster girl warrior character Rita, aka the “Full Metal Bitch”, is introduced the film begins to focus more on the pathos of being stuck in time in a way that is more reminiscent of the thwarted love narrative of Duncan Jones’s film Source Code. While Edge of Tomorrow is not nearly as distinctive as Source Code, (its industrial future war aesthetic clearly owing a debt to James Cameron’s Aliens and a kind of post-Judgement Day vision of the world from the Terminator movies) there is an engaging, human emphasis to the story that works well alongside the hefty action sequences.