La La Land

Occasionally you get nervous of seeing a film, you get apprehensive that a film that has been universally lauded and hailed will not meet the expectations you place upon it. You also fear you might miss the boat and not appreciate it when seeing it some weeks after release.  These fears amount in this day and age when flavours and trends alter quicker over time. Long gone are the days when films can take residence in a cinema and grow through word of mouth and maintain a solid box office run such as what was achieved by My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a hit that ran for three months due to word of mouth.

La La Land has been praised since it premiered at Venice last autumn. The follow up film to his Oscar winning Whiplash, Damien Chazelle returns with the film he wrote before that jazz school, drill sergeant movie.

This film is special from the outset when we witness gridlocked Los Angeles traffic being forgotten about when travellers start singing and dancing ending in a huge choreographed number on car bonnets to the tune 'Another Day of Sun' fitting for the setting of L.A. and the general disposition this film wants to shine forth.

We then meet our intrepid duo, Mia (Emma Stone) a young actress who dreams of making the big times but is struggling whilst locked in a barista job and insipid auditions. After her, we bump into Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a jazz pianist who dreams of owning his own jazz club one day. Their paths collide one night when Mia hears Sebastian play at a restaurant over Christmas, he acts badly and then they bump into each other again at a pool party.  

That night comes probably the best dance number of the film 'A Lovely Night' which recalls the sophistication of Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers films of the 1930s and the cheeky inventiveness of Gene Kelly with their scrapping shoe steps on tarmac. It also helps that it is probably the best song of the film to, a number that solidifies the partnership and also keenly makes the audience aware they are watching a musical, and the pair are in a musical.

Some critics have been critical of the singing voices by the lead pair, which is somewhat unnecessary and perhaps people just wanting to find fault, yes their voices are not the strongest but perhaps that helps in the emotional connection with the audience. These two are so in love that they feel like singing and dancing, its a cliche perhaps but this does happen to people when in love, they feel like singing at the top of their lungs or dancing on rooftops.

The film is a good musical yet I feel Chazelle has done a better job in celebrating the classic Golden Age of Hollywood movie-making from mid 1930s to the late 1950s when the Studio system was at its height with the names of MGM, Fox, Universal everywhere; he harks back to the chemistry between leading actors when the spark is there from the start. 

Chazelle cleverly does this need of appreciation a by-gone age by having Sebastian be so enamoured with the glory days of jazz music.  His passion for jazz is something is used as a device in a film to make you remember to love classic movies calling upon romance, love and music.  Chazelle name drops Notorious, Casablanca and Rebel Without a Cause and it is the Humphrey Bogart/Ingrid Bergman film that this film closely resonates with.

Casablanca was about two people who knew each other in happier times and by the film's end they are not together, even though their love is so strong, for reasons they cannot be.  In this film by the end, Mia has taken an acting job in Paris and they wait to see what happens, this leads to a five-year skip when she is now the renowned movie actress, happily married and with a two year old daughter, whilst Sebastian has his jazz club with full houses listening to new modern jazz with a younger audience.

Mia and her husband, drop by on a whim to a club, she sees the sign that she drew for Sebastian adorning the entrance and you feel the anticipation building up in her with the prospect of seeing him again.  Sebastian takes the stage, he sees Mia in the crowd (calling back to a previous song and shots in the movie) and he starts playing 'Epilogue' a composition to rival long narrative pieces from Singin' In The Rain ('Broadway Melody') or An American in Paris and whilst he plays, Mia is shot back to when she first saw Sebastian playing and their first contact is altered when he kisses her instead of brushing past her abruptly. 

The abrupt kiss leads to a dream sequence as the couple walk through an alternative five year span with mistakes avoided or rectified, yet they are together.  However, like Casablanca, they remain apart only sharing a look across a crowded room, Sebastian knowing that his persistence for Mia to succeed and attend that vital audition led to him losing her, but loving her forever.

La La Land is the Best Film of the Oscar contenders and if you have not seen it yet, you have to before it is too late, specifically on the silver screen when the vibrancy of colour and the thrill of music pours off the screen.

Drive

At Cannes last year, it seemed that Drive flew in under the radar somewhat.  Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and starring flavour of the year, Ryan Gosling - it became a word of mouth stormer on the Croisetter culminating in a Best Director award for the Danish filmmaker.  Ironic, that a Dane left Cannes with anything to shout about following the shameful exit of Lars Von Trier in the same week.

Drive now revs up for its DVD release in the UK on Monday 30th January and the film should do well on the small screen as it continues an impressive theatrical release where it garnered numerous acclaim and a film that set my personal twitter timeline into over-drive.

Drive is based on the novel by James Sallis , and stars Gosling as a man who is simply known as Driver/Kid who works as a mechanic and part-time stunt driver for the movies in Los Angeles.  He is also a getaway driver for robbers of property and banks, he promises them a five minute window where he is their's for those five minutes.  A minute under or over and he walks away, but he will get them safe as he knows the streets of LA better than anyone.  The thrilling prologue perfectly sets up the stealth mettle of the driver as he avoids police pursuit and cleverly gets involved with the finale of a NBA game.

My only complaint of the film is not really a critique of this opening scene, but without this scene the film would take a long time to get going.  Only after the death of a peripheral character, does the film explode into this smorgasborg of ultra-violence.

To that effect the film is really a B-movie in the same vein of the oeuvre of Walter Hill (Driver) or Sam Peckinpah (The Getaway) that is elevated to exalted heights by an amazing ensemble performance.  All the main characters are played by established and credible actors who take a lot of the economic writing and create real characters.

Bryan Cranston as Shannon, the Driver's boss at the garage, is especially good with a limp for added effect but there is a humbleness in his eyes as his years of experience speak volumes.  The real surprise is Albert Brooks, as the moneyman Bernie Rose; Brooks is a comedian but there is a real coldness in his performance thanks in part to the delivery of his lines.

Yet the legend of this film will be built around the chemistry and central performances of Gosling and Carey Mulligan as Irene, the next door neighbour whose life impinges upon the Driver as he attempts to lend support.  Mulligan has this innocence and purity about her that will lend to a number of roles in the next few years, it could be the making or detriment of her career.

As for the violence I was shocked by the European feel of the violence, only a Danish director could make a film with this much gore and make it look stylish.  At times the film is a victim of style over substance - slow-mo's as the Driver comes home and he parks very slowly, a slow-mo kiss in the elevator ends with an eruption of violence that paints the Driver in crimson.

The DVD includes a theatrical trailer and an intriguing Q&A with Refn held at the BFI Southbank where he refutes stories about the casting process of the two females and his pleasure in blowing one of their heads off.

It is available from Icon Home Entertainment, my thanks to Think Jam Movies for the check disc.

Crazy, Stupid, Love - Preview material

Set for UK release on 2^nd September 2011 from Warner Bros. Pictures, Crazy, Stupid, Love. stars Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone, Marisa Tomei and Kevin Bacon, and is directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (I Love You Phillip Morris).

At fortysomething, straight-laced Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) is living the dream—good job, nice house, great kids and marriage to his high school sweetheart. But when Cal learns that his wife, Emily (Julianne Moore), has cheated on him and wants a divorce, his “perfect” life quickly unravels. Worse, in today’s single world, Cal, who hasn’t dated in decades, stands out as the epitome of un-smooth.

Now spending his free evenings sulking alone at a local bar, the hapless Cal is taken on as wingman and protégé to handsome, thirtysomething player Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling). In an effort to help Cal get over his wife and start living his life, Jacob opens Cal’s eyes to the many options before him: flirty women, manly drinks and a sense of style that can’t be found at Supercuts or The Gap.

Cal and Emily aren’t the only ones looking for love in what might be all the wrong places: Cal’s 13-year-old son, Robbie, is crazy about his 17-year-old babysitter, Jessica, who harbors a crush on Cal. And despite Cal’s makeover and his many new conquests, the one thing that can’t be made over is his heart, which seems to keep leading him back to where he began.

With a huge potential audience across a wide reach of demographics judging by the talent on display from the everyman quality of Steve Carell, to the still under-rated Ryan Gosling. Female comedic quality is supplied by Emma Stone and Marisa Tomei, while overall veteran experience is guaranteed by Julianne Moore and Kevin Bacon.  As fine a group of ensemble actors as you could wish for; and directed by the two men who directed the criminally unseen I Love You Philip Morris, and wrote Bad Santa, so laughs are their perogrative. 

This is out in September, so lets get tongues wagging about Crazy, Stupid, Love before then.

Click here to watch the hilarious trailer

The official web site: http://www.crazystupidlove.co.uk/ and follow on Facebook

Blue Valentine DVD review

Blue Valentine is released by Optimum Entertainment on Monday 9th May for £12.99RRP and is also available on Blu-Ray

Director, Derek Cianfrance, has taken a long while to get his screenplay to the screen - supposedly nine years from treatment to production; what has to be asked is why did theoretically a two-hander between the man, Dean (Ryan Gosling) and wife, Cindy (Michelle Williams) take so long to get to the screen. The dual narrative tells the story of a breakdown of a marriage, whilst also showing how they came together in the first place.

This narrative of a breakdown of a marriage due to an overblown ego of a male and a derailment of romance has been seen previously in American independence cinema and is a familiar trope to be executed, most notably by John Cassavettes' Faces and most recently in Francois Ozon's memorable 5x2, which showed the breakdown of a marriage in chronological order but in reverse - starting in the divorce lawyer's office and ending with the meet cute.

On this occasion we start with the couple with their child and then sending child to grandfather to indulge in a romantic getaway at a fleabag themed hotel, ironically they choose the 'Future Room' which is exactly what they do not have by journey's end. This narrative is interrupted by flashbacks to the time when they first encountered each other, the meet cute and personal dilemmas involved once Cindy becomes pregnant with someone else's baby.

After she refuses an abortion, Dean offers to be a father to a child that is not his and husband in a new family. The film shows them 6-8 years after this life-changing decison and the effect it has had on Dean is startling; a shadow of his younger, viral self with a receding hairline and alcohol addiction, which is alluded throughout the film and admonished by the film's chronological end.

This is a bold and brave piece of filmmaking, especially by the two leads who helped with the film's flow in terms of improvising dialogue but at times some scenes come across a little too self-indulgent, such as when Dean serenades Cindy with a solo ukelele performance with a high voice as she dances in a doorway; whilst this is romantic, could the flashback just be too indicative of how perfect it all was back then and perhaps too sentimental to punch the message home.

Cindy wants to be a doctor but ends up as a nurse who is hit upon by her new boss, another example of a man in this film who is a douchebag. Most of the men in this film are douchebags, especially Dean who at times is both irritating and selfish, as is Bobby (the man who impregnated Cindy), a boy all full of testosterone. And Dean could be a renaissance man, but puts his idea of virtue above providing financial stability for his family by becoming a house painter.

Interestingly, the scene where Cindy bumps into her child's father, Bobby (Mike Vogel) in a liquor store is a weird scene but played perfectly by Williams - her eyes lighting up at meeting an old flame with excitement burning in her heart for the first time in quite a while.

However, even good production values such as switching of camera style - from handheld video for the contemporary scenes giving it a harsher, grittier quality and then harking back to 16mm for the flashback scenes giving them a warmer, happier tone - cannot save the film from the requirement of a tighter script that on occasions in the modern day scenes pleads for the less is more approach, as Dean repeats another vital line to death. Sometimes the audience, especially the independent cinema one should be respected enough to get the message straight away.

Not to do a disservice to Williams and Gosling in their performances, whilst Gosling is all brooding and showy with his sunglasses hiding inner turmoil, Williams is brilliant as a young woman whose ambition and drive to be a better person and wife than her own browbeaten mother is shot to pieces by the sheer over-inflated ego of her husband. But it is these two performances from two esteemed actors of their generation that raises this film above from passable to watchable.

Released on May 9th by Optimum Entertainment on Blu-Ray and DVD