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The Next Three Days

Paul Haggis’s directorial debut The Next Three Days makes for an absorbing thriller about a family torn apart by the conviction and imprisonment of the mother for murdering her boss. Haggis uses his trademark non-linear structure first seen in his Oscar winning film Crash, by setting up a scene of John Brennan played with surprising coolness by Russell Crowe driving through the darkened Pittsburgh streets with a dying man in his backseat.

Elizabeth Banks plays Lara Brennan incarcerated in the County Jail in Pittsburgh without hope of an appeal for her life sentence.

Not having much faith in the Pennsylvania criminal justice system, Brennan plans a daring jailbreak for his wife and an eventual escape of them and their young son from America.

In a brief scene, Liam Neeson makes a cameo guiding Brennan in the time constraints involved in breaking his wife out of a city jail. Pittsburgh is the perfect setting for this thriller with the city’s central business district consisting of a  triangular tract carved by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. Pittsburgh ‘s urban county jail where Lara Brennen is situated, makes for a more difficult escape. Neeson sketches out that in 15 minutes the inner city will be cordoned off and in 30 minutes all the major airports, and transport nodes will be shut down as the authorities search for the Brennan’s who become fugitives on the run.

The Next 3 Days is divided up into 3 sections and the pace of the film increases as the daring escape plan unfolds and takes on fruition. Whilst Banks, seen in Zach and Miri Make a Porno is essentially a comic actress does a great turn as a convicted mother, but a more accomplished actress like Naomi Watts or Nicole Kidman would have added more severity to the psychological trauma of a mother, being incarcerated and kept away from her husband and son. Haggis makes John Brennan the pivotal character, a quiet and self-absorbed Literature professor beautifully played by Russell Crowe with the story focusing more on the escape plan, than the lingering question of Lara Brennan’s innocence only to be answered in the final scenes of the film. Haggis deftly opens up a universe of questionable morality and raises the issue of how far a person would go to free their loved one in a justice system which automatically assumes guilt over innocence.

In this morality, The Next Three Days is similar to the 1996 film, Before and After directed by Barbet Shroeder, who followed on from his success of the Oscar winning film Reversal of Fortune, featuring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons.

Claus von Bulow, I presume?

All films deal with families who are torn apart by a mother, son or father who has been accused of murder and the consequent questions of guilt and innocence which naturally surround such crimes. Crime and Punishment remain an enviable topic for any filmmaker especially in the context of the modern nuclear family. Paul Haggis does not leave any loose ends plot wise making his commercial directorial debut a thrill to watch.

***Burlesque***

The fabulous poster for Burlesque is divided between Cher and Christina Aguilera. So the question remains can two divas like Cher and Christina share the same stage without the pearls flying?

Stars are legendary

In their collaborative film, Burlesque, a perfect dance drama filled with enough vanity, glitter and eye candy all set in the city of Angels, shows that while Christina can sing and boy she can sing, Cher can still hold her own in the acting stakes. After all Cher did win an Oscar for Moonstruck, as did Liza Minelli for Cabaret.

Life is a Cabaret

Christina plays Alice who escapes a dreary Iowa town to fulfil her dream of becoming a dancer and stumbles upon the Burlesque nightclub on Sunset Boulevard, the strip in Hollywood. Cher is the no nonsense club owner Tess who controls the rowdy dancers, who are wanna-be Vegas showgirls and runs a raucous establishment  which seems to be forever beset by the approaching gloom of foreclosure and greedy real estate developers. Burlesque draws very much from Bob Fosse’s Cabaret and supplants Nazi Berlin, with a celebrity-obsessed 21st century Los Angeles, which was once the home of classic Hollywood of the 40s and 50s, a style that the filmBurlesque is aiming to eternalize.

Burlesque’s storyline is nothing new, but who cares? Audiences will be seeing this film for the fantastic costumes, the brilliant singing by Christina and Cher, the racy dancing, Cam Gigandet and of course the two main Diva’s if not sharing the spotlight, but rather making it sparkle deliciously.

Christina, miss poor Iowa girl soon becomes a Diva and eclipses the leading dancer, a sour yet vulnerable performance by Kristen Bell, and gives Cher a run for her money. Which is good. As dollars are what is needed for the Burlesque club to stay open. In the tradition of Cabaret, A Chorus Line, Moulin Rouge, Burlesque is as much about the dancing, the gorgeous costumes including a dress made entirely of pearls, the makeup, Louis Vuitton shoes which sparkle all adding to the best line in the film, said by Sean, played by the irrepressible Stanley Tucci, in a similar bitchy vein to The Devil Wears Prada supporting role, as stage manager when he says to Alice  “Welcome to Wonderland” after she becomes a Burlesque dancer.

If viewers love outlandish dance films, watch Burlesque, writer and director Steve Antin’s timing is impeccable in splicing the raunchy dance numbers with the characters dialogue, particularly an hilarious number performed by Alan Cumming as the Maitre’d Alexis with a Banana, cut with a flirting repartee between Alice and Marcus, played Grey’s Anatomy’s McSteamy, Eric Dane. Burlesque is about idealists fulfilling their dreams and Diva’s remaining persistent in holding onto that glitter-tinged dream right to the spectacular closing number, all set against the Boulevard of Dreams, Sunset Boulevard.

The Tourist

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck stylish comic thriller The Tourist is more a film to showcase some European and British talent than it is a blockbuster for the two major American stars, Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.

Jolie and Depp shine as the leading couple especially in a wonderful scene at the Hotel Daniela in Venice, when Jolie who plays Elize Ward tells Frank (the Tourist) that after a dinner out, he has to sleep on the couch in the deluxe suite. Frank imagines the glamorous Elize undressing in the next bedroom, as he curls up on the crimson sofa with his spy novel.  The next morning Frank is suddenly escaping Russian gunmen on the rooftops of  Venetian villas and falls victim to the idiosyncrasies of the Italian police force when questioned about his supposed pursuers.

Venice is a much a character in The Tourist as the rest of the cast, and the ancient Italian city built on water is murky with a seductive intrigue whilst von Donnersmarck shows off this superb location, from wide-angle shots of the Piazza San Marco to subtle references in the script. One of the characters a cameo by Rufus Sewell even says if this intrigue had happened someplace else it would not be the same as it happening Venice.

The Tourist is a tribute to sophisticated comedies of the fifties and sixties complete with gorgeous costumes, a dash of intrigue and a beautiful location to match. Depp and Jolie are a wonderful pair as foils to each other’s deceptions. There is obvious tribute to the James Bond films in the Tourist, from Moonraker and Casino Royale both set in Venice, to Timothy Dalton as the head of M16 and a sinister impressive performance by Steven Berkoff, playing the billionaire gangster Shaw, reprising the role of the villain as he did with menace in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy.

The Tourist is a heady cocktail of intrigue, deception, humour and glamour letting the audience feel that like the title, they too have travelled on holiday to an exotic location and discovered a world unfamiliar to their own.

Director von Donnersmarck won the 2007 Oscar for best Foreign language film for The Lives of Others and is clearly enjoying making a less serious more glossy cinematic production whilst not compromising on the European style and sophistication of The Tourist‘s main locations, Paris and Venice.

Which always begs the question, why would a maths teacher from Madison, Wisconsin in the American mid-West be traveling alone on a TGV from Paris to Venice?

Tron Legacy is more impressive for its fantastic digital effects and a dazzling homage to the original Tron movie back in 1982 than for any impressive plotline beyond the eternal battle of good versus an evil form of the original 3 dimensional creator.

The effects are better, the look glossier and the action captivating. This version of Tron is a neon-coated Inception without Christopher Nolan’s psychological plot twists, but retaining high production values, stylish sets and director Joseph Kosinski emphasizes the infinity of the Tron digital grid, with all its notorious battlegrounds and ravishing images.

Digital Hero with Charming Dexterity

Garrett Hedlund proves himself as a leading man, the energetic Sam Flynn opposite the versatile Jeff Bridges reprising his role as Sam’s father Kevin Flynn, mysterious founder of Tron video Games, languishing in digital exile and battling an existential identity crisis with his own nemesis. Watch out for a scene-stealing camped up performance by Michael Sheen as Zuse, a sort of Electronic Discotheque owner and dubious double-crosser. Olivia Wilde makes a wonderful appearance as the fearless warrior and digital queen Quorra.

Tron Legacy is really best suited for 3-D and definitely has to be watch in a big screen cinema, with the spectacular effects and brilliant soundtrack by daftpunk. Fans of Science fiction films be sure to watch Tron Legacy more for its dazzling production design and digital effects than any unusual surprises in plot. Tron Legacy pays homage to Star Wars, Blade Runner, Terminator and all the epic science fiction films of the eighties most importantly the original ground-breaking film Tron released in 1982.

Digital Classic for the Computer Generation

Spud

Spud the film adaptation of the bestselling novel by John van de Ruit concerns the trials and tribulations of a schoolboy on the threshold of puberty going to a private boys school in the Natal Midlands abounds with literary references from Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

The allusions to the Theatre of the Absurd is not lost on John Milton, the 13 year old boy, nicknamed Spud who escapes his wacky household in Durban North and thrust into the crazy, cruel and bullying world of schoolboys all attempting to be part of a dorm gang who resemble more Lord of the Flies than Dead Poets Society. From the wild antics of his fellow classmates Spud finds refuge in his literary conversations with his English Teacher, Guv, a spot on performance by John Cleese, who is both witty and fragile as a man trapped in an environment he clearly would like to rise above, but cannot gather the courage to do so. The ever sickly and accident prone Gekko becomes Spud’s best friend offering advice on girls, moral support and non-conformity, whilst giving Spud perspective on the situation he is in from their journeys up to Hells View.

Spud is a superb South African film, which has the right balance of pathos and panic, humour and character with great cinematography, first class casting and a real sense of capturing the period of Transitional South Africa in the early 1990’s.

Directed by Donovan Marsh  and produced by Ross Garland who also brought the insightful 2007 film based on the memoirs of Radya Jacobs Confessions of a Gambler to the big screen, Spud is drawing in the crowds at all local cinemas gaining the  honour of the highest grossing film in SA in the opening week. Both Spud and Confessions of a Gambler deal with characters who go on emotional journeys in hostile environments which are unsympathetic to their own personal growth,  showing their own humanity and tenacity, which inevitably shines through.

With John Cleese and Troye Sivan giving excellent performances of teacher and pupil who both go on an often hilarious but very different change of life journeys, Spud is sure to break into the International film scene with the same dexterity that the title character manages to navigate his way through the first year of boarding school in an environment which is as ludicrous as Catch 22  and as treacherous as Dicken’s Oliver Twist.

Agora

Alejandro Amenabar’s film Agora about the ancient woman astrologer and Neo-Platonist Philosopher is an absorbing tale of religious strife in Alexandria, Egypt in the declining decades of the Roman Empire. Caught between the rise of Christianity and the intolerance of the Christians for the Jews and vice versa, the Roman pagans especially the nobility who are still laying offerings to pagan Gods soon realize the extent to which Christianity has swept the Roman empire by the end of the 4^th Century A.D.

Hypatia is more concerned about the alignment of the planets and encourages logical mathematical inquiry, philosophizing over the causes of gravity, the earth’s rotational spin and an heliocentric model of the solar system, placing the sun at the universe’s centre. Her theories on relativity, mathematics and astrology were way ahead of her time and all the knowledge of the ancient world, stored at the gorgeous library of Alexandria is soon sacked by the marauding Christians, Hypatia realizes that she is in a world, which is rapidly changing its social structure in the waning years of the Roman Empire.

Her once proud father Theon, a Roman nobleman, is played with suitable panache and misguided wisdom by Michael Lonsdale, seldom seen in many features any more. Lonsdale become famous to international audiences as the arch villain Hugo Drax in the James Bond film Moonraker. He was later seen in a cameo role as the French diplomat in The Remains of the Day.

Academy award winner for The Constant Gardener,  Rachel Weisz embraces the complex role of Hypatia and relishes in the range of emotional depth and intellectual strength the character is given, especially in relation to her former slave, Davus a wonderful performance by Max Minghella, son of the late film director, Anthony Minghella, acclaimed for The English Patient and also to Orestes a Roman prefecture played by Oscar Isaac, who is hopelessly in love with her since the student days when Hypatia was  head teacher of philosophy before Alexandria was plagued by religious strife.

Agora is a superb historical epic detailing a little known time between the fall of the Roman Empire and those tumultuous days when religious fervour swept and changed the ancient world, eventually plunging the entire ancient and once sophisticated societies of Egypt, Greece and Italy into the Dark Ages.

The ending of Agora is symptomatic of the transitional times from crumbling Empire to a  new world order and while Hypatia stands firm in her beliefs as a philosopher and astronomer, she was sacrificed as a victim of her rapidly changing city, leaving her discoveries to be lost forever.

Alejandro Amenebar the director of The Others and the Oscar winning The Sea Inside uses his flare to bring the texture and brutality of the 4^th century Alexandria to life especially in contrast to the crumbling world of philosophical endeavour in favour of religious supremacy and intolerance. The sacking of the Library at Alexandria as scrolls burn and all the ancient world’s discoveries vanish is effective and is always a lesson against those who prefer ignorance to critical research. In the case of Hypatia her knowledge was her power and her greatest liability in a world ruled by megalomaniac men blinded by faith and not vision.

Jerusalema

All the hype surrounding the 2008 South African film, Jerusalema, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival is well deserved. A gangster tale to rival Goodfellas and surely proved inspirational to such films as District 9 and any future South African gangster films in the making. Whilst as local locations go, Cape Town could be used for the French Riveira or Toronto, but Johannesburg as a film location is uniquely South African, so brilliantly captured in Jerusalema and District 9, a vast urban sprawl of cosmopolitan energy to rival Rio, Mumbai or Los Angeles. Jerusalema follows the rise of Lucky Kunene from novice car jacker to Hillbrow slum lord who follows two mantras in life those by Karl Marx that all property is theft and by Al Capone, that violence is a means to the end. Not exactly savoury role models. A gangster and the founder of communism. Lucky Kunene sees himself as the Robin Hood of Hillbrow taking some dignity back to the urban slums of downtown Johannesburg, kicking out drug dealers and prostitutes and claiming the high rise buildings as his own, whilst neglected tenants languish in the outer suburbs of the urban sprawl, too afraid to venture into Hillbrow and fix up the severely neglected tenement buildings.

Gangsters Paradise Hillbow style

Where Jerusalema triumphs is Ralph Ziman’s uncompromising  and skillful direction, depicting some serious social issues in downtown Johannesburg ranging from poverty, crime, drug addiction, xenophobia and inter-racial love, whilst never losing the sense that Johannesburg is a thriving and massively industrious city, where all its citizens are earning money to survive some by less scrupulous means. Johannesburg is as much a character in the film as Lucky Kunene, played with relish by Rapulana Seiphemo with a great supporting cast of South African actors.

The violence is uncompromising, the story gripping and the humanity undeniable all packed into a frenetically shifting urban landscape which remains as uncertain as the characters which inhabit Hillbrow. Jerusalema is heavy on action, great on story line and could rival such crime epics as Goodfellas or The Departed, depicting one man’s attempt to raise above the poverty he was born in and the environment he hopes to escape. Success is naturally as elusive as forgiveness, but the point is made that quite often men can shape their environment, seize opportunities as much as circumstances can shape or break a man’s future.

The fact that Jerusalema was not selected as a contender for the 2008 Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards is more  to do with it not entirely being in Xhosa, whilst the thought-provoking subject matter could rival any recent Foreign Language Film winners, like The White Ribbon and Pan’s Labyrinth.

Never be ashamed of lust…

Eyes Wide Open

In a staunch and insular Orthodox Jewish community, a drifter arrives, Ezri looking for work and accommodation. Aaron, a married father who has re-opened his father’s Kosher butcher shop in Jerusalem offers Ezri a place to work and to sleep upstairs from the business. Ezri is young, handsome and seems out of place in an essentially conservative society, harbouring a talent to draw and a deeper homosexual feeling towards Aaron. Initially their relationship is purely platonic, but its very difficult to separate feelings when they work, pray and basically spend all their time together. The sexual tension is rife, especially in a neighbourhood which has already demonized another man for having an affair with a young woman, contracted to be married to someone else.

Ezri invites Aaron to step out of his comfort zone and travel out of Jerusalem to some sacred waters for spiritual cleansing. Soon their intimacy turns to passion in the backrooms of the Kosher butchery, and Aaron enters a forbidden relationship with Ezri in a tightly-knit neighbourhood which is already threatening to boycott his business for being unorthodox. Elders from the synagogue advise Aaron to let Ezri go as his reputation suffers, for the sake of the moral fibre of a community that cannot suffer from the foolish love between men.

To have a window into another belief system so different to one’s own is a privilege enough, and this Israeli film is remarkable that it was ever made in the first place, with the financial backing of the Israel Film Fund and is fascinating not just at the perceptive look at an orthodox community, the strict social customs and the religious traditions which bind it, but also at the taboos which also threaten to dissolve the very strands that hold that community together.

Marriage, family and children are sacred and non-conformity is frowned upon as a deviancy left to drifters. Eyes Wide Open is a riveting film, held together by the brooding and simmering performances of Ran Danker, who shines  as the seductive and outgoing  Ezri and Zohar Strauss as the morally conflicted and claustrophobic Aaron  both entwined in a relationship as doomed as that portrayed by the Wyoming cowboys Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar.

Herding cattle and desire at Brokeback

Both Eyes Wide Open and Brokeback Mountain depict forbidden relationships between men that are at supreme odds with the environment that they are forced to inhabit but cannot relinquish. As for Ezri, like Jack Twist, both would be more comfortable in cities like Paris, Toronto and Rio de Janeiro, but have to accept the consequences of taking risks for the sake of desire in a hostile world.

The Social Network

 Canadian director David Fincher’s latest film The Social Network could fit more comfortably in the made for TV film category, but is nevertheless a fascinating examination of how one idea can affect the world.

The Social Network traces the rise of the Facebook phenomenon from the frat houses of Harvard to going global, the lawsuits that ensued and how the lives of over 500 million users have been transformed by using of Facebook from Silicon Valley to Henley-on-Thames, from Brazil to Cape Town, from Sydney to Toronto.

Harvard Harassment

Jesse Eisenberg makes a superb entrance in a major role as Mark Zuckerberg the genius behind linking the Ivy League American University social networks from Harvard to Stamford and supersedes any former attempts by creating a user-friendly interface for virtual network, sharing photos and updating one’s relationship status, now known universally as Facebook. Love it or hate it, the rise of Facebook is now a commercially viable form of communication, which has taken the digital world by storm. Fincher’s film shows the rise of the Facebook phenomenon from Zuckerberg’s cocky online response on his blog after being spurned by Erica, a lovely cameo by Rooney Mara at Harvard to his rise through several collaborations firstly with Eduardo Saverin, a diversely perceptive performance by Andrew Garfield, and then with Napster founder Sean Parker, the colourful and confident character suitably played by Justin Timberlake, proving that his acting abilities are certainly maturing.

Fincher responsible for some high end thrillers including Seven, The Game, Fight Club and Oscar nominated Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a prolific choice for a film which if left in the hands of a lesser director, could have become a slightly drawn out geek match about intellectual property rights, failed love affairs and immense wealth bestowed on a set of twenty-something’s who surely were given an added advantage already being at Harvard in the first place. The Social Network is an engrossing look at a very recent digital phenomenon and the ingenuity, entrepreneurial savvy  and success of three men who clearly realized that they had discovered a gaping hole in the social fabric of Anglo-American society and filled that void with a network which combines privacy with a sense of community.

Global Phenomenon

Facebook, like the invention of the light bulb, the car, and most obviously the internet is here to stay and will definitely grow, transform and has embraced the real 21^st century notion of a global digital village. Watch out for a wonderful performance by Armie Hammer playing both the affluent, rowing crazy twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and of course the cleverest part of The Social Network is the poster, – You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies, reminding the viewer of a similar poster?

Every face tells a story…

Mao’s Last Dancer

Juxtaposing forces combine in the brilliant ballet film Mao’s Last Dancer directed by Australian Bruce Beresford. Dancing under Communism only to be released into the world of Texan Ballet is Li’s story in Mao’s Last Dancer which triumphs as a superb cinematic ballet.

Bruce Beresford’s film of the autobiographical novel Mao’s Last Dancer by Li Cunxan is infused with a passion for dance and immediately sets up the dichotomy of a boy raised under the rigid government of Mao Zedong’s Communist China in the late 60’s and early 70s and the brash Western commercialism of Texas in 1981 the era that the hit TV series Dallas exemplified, a state built on vast oil wealth.

The Original series about Texan wealth and Eighties Decadence

Li develops into a promising ballet dancer at the Beijing Ballet School and is chosen to represent his country as he goes to America and dance with the Houston Ballet, of which the then First Lady Barbara Bush was a patron.

The opening scene is wonderful as Li arrives at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston and is greeted by the Houston Ballet choreographer Ben Stevenson played with a joie de vive by Bruce Greenwood, reprising a similar role he played as Truman Capote’s lover in Capote. Li is a citizen of communist China and is soon taken shopping at the vast malls in Houston and overwhelmed by the freedom, choice and brashness of the Texan capital, not to mention the bags of outfits from Armani,  Vuitton and Calvin Klein.

Superb Ballet film about a passion that far outweighs the political restraints of the era

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Mao’s Last Dancer excels in tracking Li’s development as a Ballet Dancer from being the principal dancer in Carmen to the final breathtaking sequence in Rites of Spring. His political status is soon revoked as he refuses to return to communist China after a sensational incident at the Chinese Consulate in Houston. Li’s opportunity at Houston ballet outweigh his desire to return to China but at the cost of not seeing his family for years.

As the Chinese communist regime softens in relations towards the West in the mid-80’s, the film shows Li returning to his home province in a tearful welcome.

This is a ballet film in all its entirety and despite the international political turmoil involved in Li’s journey to freedom, Mao’s Last Dancer will not disappoint any avid Dance fan especially those who appreciate Ballet. The film is very much Li’s story and does not dwell on the residual flamboyance of any international Ballet company and is not nearly as good as Robert Altman’s film, The Company about the Chicago City Ballet.

Another Altman Masterpiece about Ballet

Watch out for a great cameo by Kyle MacLachlan as Li’s International Immigration Lawyer which only makes the viewer wish that MacLachlan who made such cult hits in the 80’s as Dune and Blue Velvet would frequent the Big Screen more and free himself from the set of Desperate Housewives.

Australian born Beresford, director of Driving Miss Daisy and Crimes of the Heart does a fine job marrying a story about two conflicting society’s brought together by Li’s superb talent as a ballet dancer and his eventual triumph. Mao’s Last Dancer won a host of awards at the Australian Film Institutes 2009 Awards including Best Picture, Costume Design and Director.