'Tyrannosaur'

Critics worldwide have rightly acclaimed Paddy Considine’s feature debut Tyrannosaur as one of the best films of 2011. Considine's first feature presents a brutally honest portrayal of a man lost in a spiral of violence, alcoholism and loneliness. It manages to provide a skilful illustration of the issues at hand while never indulging in a tone of bourgeois condescendence.

Tyrannosaur’s opening sequence has Joseph kick his dog with a brutality that only comes with a lifelong experience of violence and humiliation. This life relates as a direct result of an existence devoid of warmth, compassion and whatever other notion makes life in the world at all bearable. The opening scene sets the tone of the whole text and, in my screening, it also made the couple in front of me leave with bowed heads, in a shameful admission of their unwillingness to ruin their perfectly good Wednesday night with an hour and a half of raging bleakness. Fair enough! Considine's Tyrannosaur is by no means an easy watch.

Considine's main protagonist Joseph is your quintessential bully in a tracksuit, or so it would seem. After another night on, what he calls, 'the rage', he finds refuge in a charity shop owned by Sophie, a devout middle-class Christian. After Sophie offers Joseph a cuppa and a prayer, the latter, convinced of her being but another middle-class do-gooder, verbally lashes out at her, leaving her in tears. So far, so cliché, but Considine is too sensible a film-maker to leave it at that.

Soon enough the audience realizes that Sophie herself is imprisoned in an existence fuelled by rage, if, in her case, directed against her. In an almost unbearable scene of extreme, because poignant, humiliation, things spiral into unstoppable violence. The subtle and quiet strands of hopeful undertones in the friendship of Sophie and Joseph almost seem doomed from the start.

Rather than being mere symbolic representations of social issues, Considine allows his characters space to divulge a rich complexity. The tone and theme of the film, just as the characters themselves are build upon the foundation of conceptual Christian duality, namely, the admission of sins past and redemption sought. The characters are desperately looking for a means of communication to bridge the gap between their loneliness and the surrounding world. Disenfranchised, these figures on the fringes of society desperately seek not only a voice, but a further justification or explanation for their actions which in itself are nothing but the accumulation of respective existential circumstances. In Joseph's case, this takes the form of destruction through rage.  Unable to build, Joseph's only means of control is destruction. At the same time, however, Joseph is very much aware of the cruelty of his actions and capable of feeling the accompanying guilt. As such, Considine brilliantly portrays this extreme inner complex in the bar scene in which Joseph, seated in front of a pint in a lonely corner, almost goes out of his mind, muttering to himself, unable to give proper expression to the emotions that tear him apart. Again, Joseph turns to the only means of emotive execution he knows: violence.

Joseph is the man to make malevolent japes at his wife, while the cruel awareness of his own actions tears him apart.

Hanna, on the other hand, attempts to give meaning to her inhumane surroundings through, not so much her faith, but the rhetoric of the Christian dogma. She uses the Christian values of forgiveness almost in an endeavor to justify her martyrdom; most noticeably through the status of abused wife. She turns to Joseph in the certainty that he needs to be saved, until she finds herself in need of saving. Salvation, here, being somewhat a too blunt description for the relationship that is formed between the two protagonists. Considine never forces the topic, he lets it unfold in its own right, never feeling the directorial need to clarify the subtlety of character-motive. As such, the audience never feels certain as to the authenticity of Hanna's belief, which, in the end, is of little consequence. Joseph and Hanna's alliance is not so much one of love, a one of attempted redemption, shared loneliness and communal forgiveness for sins committed past and present.

As expected, the performances are nothing short of brilliant. Peter Mullan is superb in portraying Joseph with an underlying, omni-present rage that almost takes the physical form of a restrained twitch. The only slight discrepancy lies in his somewhat rugged, nevertheless quite healthy-looking physique, as his skin color lacks the greyish tone of a long-term alcoholic.

Coleman, of course, proves to be the revelation of the film. Known mostly for her performance in Peepshow and The Green Wing, Coleman couldn't have found a better role to break the typecast of a slightly ditsy, chaotic, but nevertheless lovable girl next door. She plays Hanna with a heart-breaking fragility that never descends into the saccharine. It is her smile that holds the most power over the spectator, as it is as innocent as it is melancholic. She is seen gulping vodka in tears in the kitchen of her charity shop, only to break into that dejected, sweet smile of hers once a customer enters.

 It is the poignant smallness of moments like these that make the film immensely powerful. Scenes of this cinematic quality tap into the full tapestry of the characters' inner life, without having to resolve to overly grand cinematic gestures. The depiction of a broken man who, while having initiated the death of his dog, nevertheless stays by his side, while the latter dies. The extreme humiliation of a woman urinated upon by her husband while being asleep. The destruction of a cuddly toy by a dog initiating the collapse of a childhood. Considine manages to let these moments manifest within the text without ever resolving to pathos. I have very much a mind to send a copy of the DVD to Clint Eastwood. 

'Silver Linings Playbook'

Pat is bipolar. Tiffany is depressed.

Pat nearly beat his wife's affair to death and has just left the mental institution where he spent the last eight months. He longs for a reunion with his wife, restraining order notwithstanding.

Tiffany has developed nymphomaniac tendencies after the death of her husband and battles a severe depression.

Sounds like the newest Ken Loach? Nope, here comes David O. Russell's Hollywood rom-com in the tradition of a 30s screwball comedy. Like the flawed individuals that people this film, the latter is at odds with itself. First things first though.

Pat then returns to the family home in Baltimore in order to live with his Dad, an OCD bookie who comes to regard his son as the good luck charm his team needs to win, and his mum, a woman of near saintly patience who seems to constantly be churning out sausages and meatballs from her kitchen.

When Pat is invited to dinner by his friend Ronnie and his dominating wife Veronica ( Julia Stiles here, again superb in her signature role as the Ice Queen), he (re-)meets Tiffany. Pat has no qualms about using Tiffany as a courier to get a letter to his wife, seeing as he isn't allowed to approach her. Tiffany in turn, fully aware of being used, strikes up a deal in which she forces Pat to take part in a dance competition to be held at a local hotel.

It is rather surprising how O.Russell tries his hand at formulaic cinema, especially with the last scene gaining in immense importance and momentum through a bet placed on the outcome, the presence of an emotional rival and a public platform for the couple's blossoming romance.

This is a film that lives through smaller moments as the plot is short of ludicrous sometimes. I won't say too much, but the bet? It seems as if the screenwriters constantly tried to find solutions to narrative hiccups and the film never quite feels a unified whole and always slightly out of sync. That being said, it thrives in its careful weaving of a rich character fabric, especially in the care and attention to detail given to the supporting roles, first and foremost of course Pat's dad and mum and the relationship they have, which comes across as very real in Pat's mum's acceptance of his dad's violent streak and the latter's apologetic and absolute loving of her. Everyone in this house is a culprit, his mum for her acceptance and negligence to act, his dad for the violent outbursts which resemble his son's in a way which he fails to see and Pat, in his absolute expectancy of complete tolerance from his surroundings. At the same time, no one's guilty as his mum's passivity becomes patience, his dad's aggression is coupled with a sincere desire to connect with his estranged son and Pat's self-involvement is fueled by the will to be a better man.

It is in O. Russell's never judging his characters that the film excels. While most of the audience accepts the ludicrous plot-line of the bet as we're so used to the cinematic code of 'if it's in the plot it must be true', the directorial restraint, however, also gives the spectator the chance to follow and evolve with the characters at his/her own pace, resulting in an emotional participation rarely found in contemporary mainstream, and make no mistake, mainstream this still is.

Pat's motivation and enthusiasm are a near-scary thing to behold. Remember Tom Cruise in Magnolia? You get the same vibe from Pat here. Pat is an incredibly dislikeable character at first, obnoxious, volatile and self-centred. This does provide, however, for the funniest scenes in the film. O. Russel unobtrusively manages to let the audience warm towards this self-proclaimed self-help pseudo-psychologist in letting us discover the genuine despair and honest will for betterment behind it all. One cannot help but feel admiration when faced with a man who has such a strong will for happiness. Still, the film seems to have done better with American audiences, maybe because the very themes of self-actualization and betterment through emotional bonding just seem more embedded in the cultural fabric of the States. At the same time, scenes like Pat freaking out because he cannot find his wedding video ring uneasily true and have an anguished authenticity to it; in moments like these character-development moves away from narcissistic self-entitlement as the magnitude of Pat's day-to-day struggle of keeping it together becomes apparent. Cooper's performance is loud, but honest and, I say this in full conscience of my own arrogance, a little unexpected.

Teaming him up with Jennifer Lawrence seemed even more of an odd choice to be honest, but proved to be one of the best of the film. Lawrence is as unafraid an actress as they come, she's not only constantly in Pat's face, she's in ours too. She plays Tiffany with a brashness which is as refreshing as it is, at times, uncomfortable to watch. She throws the offer of sex in Pat's face, hiding the vulnerability which inevitably accompanies asking someone to be your friend, even in your twenties. Tiffany becomes the voice of self-acceptance: yes she's dirty, but she also likes that about herself and can he say the same thing about himself. And can we? This scene by definition should have been uncomfortable to watch, yet, wasn't. Lawrence's performance is genuine and, most importantly, never over-the-top, which is not a given, considering this role. There's an appealing sloppiness to Tiffany with her low-cut cleavage and foul mouth, as she is the only one not afraid to tackle Pat.

Her quest for something joyful takes the shape of the dance competition and O. Russell deliberately chooses to make them pretty much suck as dancers, while in a clever twist on the joyful spectacle the musical interlude, he makes us watch a scene from Singing in the Rain. It is here, that the message hits home, as while the audience accepts joyful eruption in musicals or the modern equivalent of dance films, we absolutely refuse to integrate it into daily life. Yes, the final scene was incredibly cringe-worthy to watch, mainly because of its normalcy, at the same time, however, the spectatorial mood shifted from embarrassed to cheerful and here lies the film's greatest achievement. This might seem banal, yet, it has been a long time since I was involved and not merely observing characters on screen.

It further seems as if De Niro is back on track, playing the dad with an emotionally charged intensity and, lo and behold, funny subtlety at the same time, which make his performance a joy to watch, especially in combination with the wonderful Jacki Weaver who acts almost solely with her huge eyes, filling the screen in puppy-like dismay. Then there's Chris Tucker in the role of Pat's friend Danny. He's, and I never thought I would say this about Chris Tucker, but, surprisingly low-key, yet delivers some of the funniest lines of the film. Remains for me to mention Anupam Kher as Pat's therapist, who seems to take Pat with exactly the right kind of low-beat humour the latter needs.

Yet, there's an elephant in the screening room and here I'm left in two minds about the film. As such: Can mental illness be used as romantic premise of a screwball comedy? Love as miracle cure for mental issues, self-betterment and redemption through personal discipline and emotional connection almost seem like a chapter from screen-writing 101 under the heading of character motivation. Only in Hollywood. Even accepting the argument that it might be a useful thing to depict mental illness in its most rudimentary form and remove the stigma by putting it in the context of a romance, I still cannot rid myself of a slight feeling of exploitation when it comes to the use of bi-polar disorder as character-motivation and a happy ending which seems to advocate the fact that no matter how ill you are, the puritan values of a working discipline and the following of a value system helping your re-integration as full member of society, will miraculously cure you. Just like the American ceremonial nature of sporting and sport outcomes take on a nigh-ritualistic spirit, almost standing in for a substitute of sense-making in life. As such, the film, in raising these questions, leaves an after-taste completely counter-productive to its actual outset.

The American pursuit of happiness has a darkly hysteric underside in Silver Linings Playbook and the audience becomes an emotional participant after having witnessed scenes of an accuracy so utmost it becomes painful to watch, even if never in a voyeuristic, but in a compassionate manner. The film has its merits, foremost in its all-round excellent performances and genuinely funny moments, such as my absolute favourite, the Raisin Bran scene, absurd and original. Then again, the mixed message the film conveys never really sits easy as I'm not sure if dancing and free will cure bi-polar disorder and post-traumatic depression. Soundtrack's good though.

'Gangster Squad'

Ruben Fleischer's already proven his ability to gleefully play with extreme violence in Zombieland, so it seems it would only be a matter of time before he would turn to the potentially most violent period in American history, namely post-war LA.

Gangster Squad opens with the typical noir voice-over, here in the form of some such nonsense about badges men wear and how it defines them. It's that age-old American question dating back to the pioneers of who 'owns' a town. The answer is always the same: the wrong guy. Here, in 1949 LA it's Mickey Cohen, former boxer turned Jewish mobster whose physique resembles a squashed pit bull while his behaviour is not of much better quality. Cohen's got the whole town in his pocket and after getting rid of, whatchamacallit, his mobster superior Dragna, Cohen runs the show and there's not much anyone can do about it, especially with most of the police force on Cohen's payroll, unless one does it off the books that is. Which is exactly what police chief Parker, one old-school bastard and only incorruptible in the force proposes to Sgt. John O'Mara, war hero and straight shooter all round. Nolte's voice here sounds as raspy as wrapping a glass vase in tin foil and throwing it down some stairs, it's downright scary to watch at times.

O'Mara, with the help of his wife, The Killing's wonderful Mireille Enos, sets up a small squad with which to go after Cohen and his operation. The team consists of a nice bouquet of noir stereotypes, you've got the drunk cynic who has to be convinced by a dramatic event to do what's right, the crazy gun nut, the young tag-along, the street-wise uniform and the bespectacled intelligence genius. Leaving the badge at home, armed with righteous intentions, but never able to be accused of subtlety, O'Mara and his team hit Cohen where it hurts. Follows a visual feast of violence. Plot-wise this is pretty much it, with a sub-romance between Sgt. Jerry Wooters and Cohen's girlfriend Grace Faraday.

Remember that time when we were all able to sit in the cinema or in front of the TV on Sunday afternoons and just have fun, a kind of childhood ideal situation, uncritical and unbridled joy in film, no matter how good or how bad? Well, this is it people! There is nothing, I repeat, absolutely nothing subtle or refined about Fleisher's film. The clichés are milked for all it's worth and the characters almost seem like stereotypes of stereotypes, if you know what I mean. Nevertheless, it has been a long time since I was so thoroughly entertained for two hours. Gangster Squad will never be a classic, I'm not even sure it's a particularly 'good' film, but the thing is, it doesn't set out to be. It never pretends to be anything else than what it is, namely a good time in cinema. It's a sensationalistic vehicle, handsome in all its artificial glory, funny, though never witty, while the performances are good enough to save the one-liners from unbearably cringe-worthy to delightfully cheesy.

If you're looking for real noir or a Scorcese-like gangster thriller, you will inevitably end up wanting to hurl your cheesy nachos (Yes! I'm talking to you, you smelly pseudo-film buff in Metallica shirt and fuzzy facial pubes in the third row) at the screen. Do us all a favour and put Gangster Squad in context. This is pop-art cinema at its best, a shallow pastiche and I mean this in the best possible way. Cinema for the eyes, not the brain.

Anyway, it wouldn't be a critique without the criticising part now, would it? Surprisingly here it comes in the shape of Sean Penn's performance. It remains uncertain whether Penn's Cohen is supposed to be a spoof of the gangster or a chilling rendition of the alleged real-life lunacy of one Mickey Cohen. As it is, Penn's performance shifts uneasily between frightening intensity and a strange goofing around. I'm not even going to start on the deformed facial implants he wears and which seem to move throughout the course of the film. Or maybe it's got to do with the fact that we’re not used in seeing the method actor in an entertainment blockbuster of this scale. 

Josh Brolin is the one thing that saves his character from incredulous huffing on the audience's part, as he infuses O'Mara with a believability that is hard to explain, but has to do with the physicality of his performance. His body language tells you without the slightest doubt that this guy does believe in the black-and-white moral code he has created for himself. When Keeler questions their actions as the difference between cop and gangster vanishes, O'Mara seems downright taken aback.

Gosling plays Wooter with what he hopes is the suave laconic irony of a Kevin Spacey and even though Wooter has some of the best lines of the film, there is only one Spacey and Gosling's high pitched voice does not help his virility. Nevertheless, Gosling delivers a solid performance and especially stands out in the combined scenes with Stone, who plays the femme fatale with a sultriness which has mostly to do with her voice. Unfortunately the verbal pin ball dialogue between the femme fatale and the anti-hero, the life-blood of all noir, falls just short of witticism here. There is a lot of potential left unexplored in the Grace character, as Stone's screen time is slightly too limited and there is no sassy boldness or any sense of real danger to this dame, apart from the one inherent in the very idea of messing with a mobster's girl.

Michael Pena, Robert Patrick and Giovanni Ribisi are all underused in terms of their potential talent for that matter, nevertheless, quality lies in the detail, and all the performances are a joy to watch.

There has been quite a strong negative reaction to Dion Beebe's digital cinematography. Ironically, the very noir period was all about glitzy shallowness and the beginning of the materialistic age with the coming of the 1950s. Let's not forget that noir has always been a style rather than genre. If they would have had the digital means back then, I guess, they would have. The shoot-out in the lobby with the Christmas tree at the end is a thing of sheer beauty. Why Fleischer and Beebe felt the need to up things a little digitally in the fight scene at the end I'll never understand as it only disturbs the smooth sleekness of the visuals in general.

Gangster Squad is a swanky feast for the eyes. Its overblown silliness, both visually and thematically are a joy to watch, if that is your cup of tea. There's a comic-book feel pervading the film and, yes, the violence is glorified and stylish, but , come on!, this is pure entertainment as the numerous shots of the Hollywoodland sign keeps reminding us. Who says formulaic film-making must be bad as sometimes you want poptarts, not paté.

'Jack Reacher'

Christopher McQuarrie is mostly known for his work on The Usual Suspects and his directorial début, the hugely underestimated The Way of the Gun, so it was with an open mind ( and despite Tom Cruise) that I went to see Jack Reacher.

The opening sequence is one of the most suspenseful seen in cinema since, well The Usual Suspects, well crafted, shot in that subdued grey-colour scheme giving you that tingling hopeful sensation that you might just see that unexpected cinematic gem you never thought of looking for in this very film. Unfortunately, these hopes are soon bashed, but first things first. JR then opens with a sniper in a garage shooting five seemingly random people. The patient handling of the camera has you gripping your seat in anticipation and really conveys that horrible principle of completely random and thus absurd selection. It's knowledge McQuarrie plays with in this sequence, the horrible spectatorial knowledge that people are going to die and the terrible observation of the unknowing soon-to-be-dead. The mise-en-scene is more terrifying for its apparent simplicity and understatement, there is no blood to be seen, no brains splashed on the pavement and the screams remain muffled as if heard from a great distance, maybe a garage on the other side of the river, in which a sniper is taking his terrible pick.

On investigating the crime scene, Officer Emerson finds a fingerprint on a coin in the parking meter and a bullet overlooked by the rest of the police. A culprit is soon found in Iraq veteran Barr. The latter refuses to talk only advising the investigators to get Reacher. This becomes a problem as Reacher is the proverbial ghost, an ex-military who just vanished off the face of the earth, no phone number, no address, no credit card, just a social security number and the occasional money withdrawal, hey, dental is important ! Good thing then, that in exactly the moment they talk about him, Reacher walks through the door. I think that was meant to be humorous, but only came across as anti-climactic and slightly, erm, dumb. The rest of the film follows the Quincy principle: You know: Quincy deduces something the others don't believe, because, plainly they're too stupid, so he spends his time being admired by the ladies and patiently collecting evidence for what he long knows. All this is not a bad thing in itself, we've all seen films with less to offer plot-wise and enjoyed them, but here, things never quite take off. There's a veil that cannot be lifted, it seems, a shallowness which is never broken even if at times the film offers glimpses of McQuarries' talent.

Even Tom Cruise is, how shall I put this, alright? He does look a bit squashed though. Physique aside, he does seem to do justice to the Reacher character from Lee Child's novel series (I never read one) at least in terms of cockiness and the looming larger than life part. Fans of the cheesy one-liner will have a field day with this one, however, any form of witticism goes completely amiss in JR, as Cruise hasn't got the self-deprecating smirk of a Bruce Willis, neither are the lines of the excessive stupidity resulting in a hilarious action-thriller self-reflexivity of, oh, I dunno, a Schwarzenegger film. One line cannot be faulted however and that is: 'I mean to beat you to death and drink your blood from a boot.' It was as if the eighties came back and gave one big, comforting hug!

Don't get me wrong, I'm no big fan of the vigilante self-serving message the film conveys, but then, action thrillers are generally not designed for the politically sensible! So enough said about the issue of killing guys because the system might let them go! At least McQuarrie is carrying on the American cinematic tradition of regarding the law as intrinsically corrupt and against the little man!

Rosamund Pike plays Helen Rodin, daughter of the DA and smart idealistic defense lawyer of Barr. She spends her screen-time with her arms pressed together to emphasize a cleavage one has not seen on her before! There is no chemistry whatsoever between her and Cruise which is a good thing as I always find female interest in Cruise to be the scariest part of the fiction! Pike 's daddy issues seem to be the sole motivations of her career. All in all, she seems to be a projection surface upon which Cruise can alternately bounce ideas or polish his male ego. In one of the funniest scenes, though unintentionally so, Pike cannot concentrate as Cruise walks around with his bare torso! To be fair, I had a hard time looking away, however more in the I-shouldn't-but-cannot-stop-looking-at-the-accident kind of way. The strangely off angle of the shot with Pike centre-stage and Cruise's chest just sticking in the frame is just too weird. It's as if Cruise's nipples just popped in to say 'Hi'. Anyway, enough bare chested nonsense, back to Pikes' performance and my lament: Why, oh, why, did she ever accept this role? Pike is a good actress, on the way to being great, but even she cannot save this shallow character and Cruise-admiring dialogue from the most simplified form of misanthropy. In the end, most of the time, she resembles a Playboy version of a lawyer. This is female empowerment as imagined by Hollywood: Yes, she's in heels, but only because she chooses to as an educated adult and her salivation whenever Cruise enters the frame is one of empowerment. Yes, right!

My near-obsession with Richard Jenkins is well documented, but even he cannot weasel his way out of poor character conception. Jenkins' acting relies mainly on his world-weary, droopy-eyed slouching, but here it constantly seems as if Jenkins was really just sad and depressed about the quality of the lines he has to offer. Richard Jenkins cannot and should not under any circumstances be used as cannon fodder. That's what we got Donald Sutherland for!!!

The reason why JR is not a complete failure is two-fold: Werner Herzog and Robert Duvall! When coming upon Herzog's name in the opening credits, it felt as if the world had shifted out of place, kind of like what you imagine Middle Earth must have felt like when Sauron took over the show! But then, we have come to expect the unexpected from Herzog. Herzog's character Zec is the stuff of European medieval fairy tales. Why he is blind on one eye is never explained, however, it helps create a character who is vividly nightmarish, ironically not so far off a Kinski performance. Maybe Herzog picked up a few things on the set of Aguirre! When he gnarls: I spent my first winter as a prisoner in Siberia wearing a dead man's coat. I chewed these fingers off before the frostbite could turn to gangrene – one cannot help but salute him. Werner, you the man!

The other performance gem comes in the form of Duvall's character as gun-nut Cash, one of the craziest and most likeable characters on screen. Duvall plays Cash with exactly the right kind of devil-may-care crazy-son-of-a-bitch attitude that the genre needs and it's only when either Duvall or Herzog appear that the general stagnancy of the film is broken and the action really comes to life. Sadly, their screen-time is too limited for those two to save the film.

McQuirre is clearly fascinated with pulp fiction, from Hammett and Chandler to Higgins and most recently Child- their influences are felt. The protagonist, type lone vigilante gun-man, is as noir as they come. The world-weariness and jaded sense of justice are as old as cinema itself. The double-crossings, set-ups and innocence corrupted, the whole thematic shenanigans - all present. So, by definition, this should be one amazing two-hour ride. Except, it never takes off. Cruise cannot pull Reacher off, Pike remains stale and doll-like, the action drags on, never reaching the point of explicitly boring but never far off. Duvall and Herzog manage to infuse some life into this over-reaching (Yep, I went there!), but, unfortunately, Jack Reacher remains one of those films you can watch hungover on a Sunday afternoon with a box of greasy take-away and that hair-of-a-dog pint. This vehicle for Cruise's ego does, however, not warrant an eight-quid ticket. Money better invested in buying a Richard Jenkins poster to put over your bed...just a suggestion!