Father of my Children

Father of my Children 

Director: Mia Hansen-Løve
Written By: Mia Hansen-Løve
Photography: Pascal Auffray 
Starring: Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Chiara Caselli, Alice de Lencquesaing
Year: 2009
Country: France, Germany 

 Humbert Balsan may not be a name you know; he was French film producer with a passion for cinema, producing films such as Lars von Trier's Manderlay and many of the later films of Merchant and Ivory. Humbert was also a sufferer of depression and tragically in 2005 was found one afternoon hanging in his office in Paris.

 Four years later film-maker Mia Hansen-Løve created Father of my Children, a fictionalized drama based on the life of Humbert Balsan. Although  I should strictly state that Father of my Children is not a biopic of Humbert Balsan, it's merely inspired by his story. 

 Grégoire Canvel is the name character played by Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, the first half of the movie intersects between Grégoire's business life and his family life he shares with his wife and three children. In these different worlds we see two different Grégoires; In his business life we see a man who is intelligent and passionate, whereas in his family life he see the caring and nurturing side of his nature. We kindle a strong affection for Grégoire right before shocking occurrence that flips the film fifty minutes in. The second half of the picture is how the people around him, especially his family, cope with his death. 

 The thirty-one year old director,  Mia Hansen-Løve, she has great eye and feel for pace. Fortunately, for her more than anyone else, she doesn't have any relation the the British gangster film-maker, Nick Love. 

 Father of my Children is both a touching and engaging drama, and an insightful and look at the film industry.   

Score: 4/5. 
    

True Romance

True Romance

Director: Tony Scott
Written by: Quentin Tarantino 
Photography: Jeffrey L. Kimball 
Starring: Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper. 
Year: 1993
Country: USA, France.   

 We all know by now, I'm sure, that last month director Tony Scott died tragically.  It dawned me as the initial shock and sadness faded that I hadn't seen one of the late Mr. Scott's most critically acclaimed films, True Romance. Browsing in a cheap second-hand DVD and Games store, I saw a copy of True Romance and decided to pick it up. 

  For clearance, this is the original cut of the film, not the  later Tarantino Cut (Sometimes known as the Director's Cut) which I understand has a darker ending and has a non-liner narrative. 

 Tarantino gets the right to get his own cut because he wrote the screenplay (long before he made Reservoir Dogs,  and it's apparent from scene one that it's a QT screenplay. True Romance is much more a Quentin Tarantino film than it is a Tony Scott film, sorry auteur theory. Any time the male lead, Clarence, is talking about cinema or music, it's just Quentin talking vicariously through Christian Slater. 

 Clarence Worley is a Elvis Presley and Sonny Chiba obsessed, law-abiding, 20-something guy who works in comic-book store and seems to repel members of the opposite sex, until he meets Alabama (Patricia Arquette), a sweet talking call-girl who shares many of his interests. While freshening up in the bathroom, he's visited my his mentor (who only Clarence can see) played by Val Kilmer. He's never referred to by name and is credited only as Mentor, but he is clearly meant to be Elvis. He couldn't be credited as such because of legal reasons. Elvi-The Mentor persuades Clarence to kill Alabama's pimp, Drexl. After he kills him, Clarence finds a suitcase full of cocaine. Clarence and Alabama drive down to L.A to try and sell on the cocaine to a movie producer and use to money to start a new life together. 

 True Romance has a fantastic supporting cast; Dennis Hooper play's Clarence's Dad, Gary Oldman is like he often is, unrecognisable, as Drexl the pimp, Brad Pitt in an early role for him playing a stoner, Saul Rubinek playing a movie producer supposedly based on both Joel Silver and Oliver Stone. And Christopher Walken who, like in Pulp Fiction, is only in one scene but it's the most memorable scene in the film.      

 The film, being from '93, is in Scott's original recognizable style (long lenses and smoke diffusion), before he radically changed it, for the worse in my opinion, in the last decade with Man on Fire and Domino, where he drained a lot of the colour and overused used fast zooms in and out and other camera techniques.   

 Who'd have thought that one of the best romance movies ever made would be full of drugs, violence and black comedy? Ok, so maybe True Romance isn't one of the best romance films ever made, it certainly doesn't stand with movies like Casablanca, Brief Encounter or Before Sunrise, but it certainly a lot fun and packs a pretty big punch. Thank you Tony, you will be missed. 

 Score: 3.5/5   

 

Youth in Revolt

Youth in Revolt 

Director: Miguel Arteta.

Written By: Gustin Nash. 

Photography: Chuy Chávez.

Starring: Michael Cera, Portia Doubleday, Ray Liotta. 
Year: 2009.
Country: USA.

 After becoming a household name from the perfect but short lived FOX comedy, Arrested Development, and two of 2007's biggest films, Juno and Superbad, Canadian teen actor Michael Cera became typecast before you could even say Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. 

 When it was discovered that Chuy Chávez was releasing an adaptation of the C. D. Payne novel, Youth in Revolt, about a sixteen year old who creates a separate, evil, personality to impress a girl (Portia Doubleday), it seemed we where finally going to see another side of Michael Cera.   

 Nick Twisp (Cera) is sixteen, a geek and a virgin. Though not the traditional geek that's into Magic the Gathering and Superman, but a more new age geek that's into Jean-Luc Godard and Frank Sinatra, sometimes referred to as "Hipster Geeks" which I object to, liking foreign language movies for their artistic value does not make you a hipster. But I digress. When Nick discovers the charming francophile, Sheeni Saunders, he thinks that Nick Twisp isn't enough to win her heart, so he invents himself an evil alter-ego called François Dillinger. The evil François Dillinger isn't much different from the feeble and awkward Nick Twisp, he just has a pencil moustache and a cigarette. Which is fine, it adds comic value and I like Michael Cera so it's okay, it just doesn't do any favours for his career. 

There are some laugh out loud moments in Youth in Revolt, but it falls short of passing the six laugh test for comedies. Youth in Revolt had the potential to be a film for a generation, but instead it will become forgotten in time. It's inspired me to read the book but I can't see me myself ever watching the film again.     
           
 Score: 3/5 

The Town

The Town

Director: Ben Affleck.

Written By: Ben Affleck, Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard.

Photography: Robert Elswit. 

Starring: Ben Affleck, Jeremy Renner and Rebecca Hall. 

Year: 2010.

Country: USA.

  After directing his younger brother Casey in the superb Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck places himself in front of the Camera for his next directing venture, The Town. 

 The Town is a modern day bank heist movie with it's heart in bank heist movies of the past. It owes a debt to movies like Michael Mann's Heat. 

 The Town, which is Charlestown, Boston, a place infamous for it's history of Irish Mobs and high crime rates. Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) leads a team of four which includes his amoral best friend, James Coughlin (Jeremy Renner). While robbing a bank Coughlin decided to kidnap the manager, Claire (Rebecca Hall), and leave her blindfolded on a beach. When MacRay runs into her in a laundromat,  he ultimately falls for her. Unaware that her new boyfriend is one of the men that robbed her bank, Claire is helping an FBI team, led by Mad Men's Jon Hamm hunt them down.

 Ben Affleck does a pretty good job of directing, there are the occasional and rare out-of-place arty moments where you think 'Ben, if you wanted to make an art film...' His acting was on-par, too; A lot of people claim to hate Ben Affleck's acting, which I've always found ridiculous. Affleck's nether a particularly good or bad actor, if you "Hate" him you must be really easily offended. 

 The rest of the cast includes Chris Cooper and Pete Postlethwaite (in the last role of his released before his death in early 2011).  Most the acting in the Town is good despite the dialogue sounding unnatural. The actors didn't make the words their own; I think Ben Affleck may have been a bit too protective of his script. The only bad performance was Blake Lively's, whose unbelievable and OTT performance shouldn't come as a surprise as she's awful in everything. 

 If, like me, you thought the coolest thing about Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break was the novelty masks of former presidents they used during the robberies, then you will enjoy the array of diverse masks they use in The Town. Given that when you strip The Town naked it is at most a romance film, it has more than a fair share of on the edge of your seat set species and action sequences. 

 The Town makes for a fairly entertaining watch. A cut above most films of it's type and has potential for repeat viewings; it will make a good double bill with Spike Lee's Inside Man.