The Zero Theorem (2013) – Dir: Terry Gilliam (Monty Python, The Fisher King)

Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained) is Qohen (pronounced Ko-en) Leth, his boss the interesting nerd, Joby (David Thewlis) often mispronounces Qohen’s name, calling him Quinn. Joby is angsty and anxiety-ridden, he’s a little bit crazy.

Thewlis’s Joby lacks presence. He doesn’t really follow through with the character. Joby is an administrator, an overseer of the IT talent – mainly because he burnt out as a coder when they put him on the big project. So he’s nuts, but other than being a bit nervy there’s nothing specific about his illness – which is the most developed trait of his character. It leaves one wondering why, knowing the actor has the talent to portray a character well, and express his well-drawn persona without expositional dialogue, simply by becoming that character. Why there wasn’t a finished character figured out for Thewlis to express.

Qohen is a hypochondriac and suffers severe social phobia. He doesn’t like people. A piece of his character which somewhat assassinates our feelings of sympathy, empathy, etc. is when he reveals that he used to drink, do drugs, sleep with lots of women – in short he used to be cool. This makes him more monastic than pathetic, and he’s not all that devout so the monk thing doesn’t work for him, either (it doesn’t fit with his personality; it’s not genuine.) So where does that leave Qohen, this man we are starting to care about?

He’s not that pathetic, he is abstaining by choice, so we don’t feel sorry for him. He does suffer social phobia, but when he gets set up to work from home this is no longer a problem, and he owns his own home – an old church.

He meets a girl who we don’t trust, is she on the boss’s dollar? It seems too obvious that she just happens to be throwing herself at our socially-stunted techno-monk, at a time where his performance puts him miles ahead of the curve, yet his health concerns are a concern for his bosses.

They want Qohen to be happy, not because they care, but because a happy worker is a productive worker. Qohen doesn’t feel challenged by his work. He does feel entitled to a little bending of the system, so that he can be more comfortable and get more work done.

So management (Matt Damon) decide to put Qohen on the big project (the one that turned Joby crazy – though Gilliam doesn’t really sell the crazy with specifics or depth.) They don’t tell Qohen what the project is, (he doesn’t care – it’s all code to him,) they just introduce him to his new system which is all designed around him, designed to support him and keep him happy and working.

Qohen’s story is fun and interesting. The world of this film is a bit less than imaginative, a little derivative. The real problem is with our protagonist – we don’t understand him. As a result we don’t care about him. If we knew from the beginning that Qohen is a guy struggling with social phobia, who used to be cool, but has given up everything fun and as a result he is a bit creepy and doesn’t know how to talk to people – this would be a start.

He doesn’t like people. But you don’t forget something like that. If he used to be cool and popular as plastic and superficial as that is, then he still knows how to be. The problem with this character is that all those conflicts and confusions are an interesting setup for a character. Finding answers to those questions, or figuring out where those arguments and puzzles lead would make for an interesting part of the story and a fully deep character. However, instead it's all setup, no payoff.

The most annoying factor of this film, besides half-drawn characters is that this giant philosophical rant that the film is supposed to be about is scripted into boring, irrelevant, expositional dialogue.

The nice thing is the twist at the end, this with better characters could have been a really deep, personal and interesting ending. However, instead, it simply feels like Qohen made a bad choice and it’s a tragic romance – but it wasn’t supposed to be.

The ending is horrible because the character is only half-developed. Everything is a weight resting on the shoulders of Qohen – Waltz plays silly rather than sincere, and instead of performing this character – he talks about himself. As much fun as monologues can be, this is a semi-written, badly performed monologue which hides expositional dialogue and pretends to be a scifi/fantasy film.

2 stars

American Sniper (2014) – Dir: Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino, Unforgiven)

Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) and his brother are cowboys from Texas. They like to fight, drink and chase women. Chris considers himself a patriot and when his life as a cowboy seems aimless, he notices the war on the news and decides that’s a cause he can get involved in. He’s thirty years old and ready to start basic training as a Navy Seal. His brother follows him into it.

Chris is a strong Texan stereotype – it’s a role he’s fallen into, partly because it’s a stereotype that he likes, but he’s also the strong, quiet, sensitive man. He meets Taya (Sienna Miller) in a pub and holds her hair back while she vomits. They bond over the experience. They get married and soon after, Chris ships off to Iraq ready to join the war.

Like many war movies, especially a lot of modern ones, few of the characters beside our protagonist are alive long enough, or interesting as individuals, to tell the difference between them. A few just barely stand out:

Biggles (Jake McDorman) is friends with Chris from early on, the actor displays a lot of personality, but there isn’t much of a unique history, or development. And he gets taken out after being on screen for only a short time and loses his sight.

Marc (Jake McDorman) benefits from a few more details as a person, but gets so little screen time that the emotion to sell the character is pushing a rock uphill.

D (Cory Hardrict) is one of the last left standing (yet the least developed of the three memorable-ish characters,) when Chris finally feels like he’s achieved his mission so he can quit the war on his terms.

Each of the other times Chris returns home, he is just killing time until he gets to go back. He struggles when he is sent home, because his mind thinks he’s still at war, every situation is a high pressure, life or death decision and as a result his health is suffering.

However, American Sniper is one of the better films of its type in this way, because while the focus is on the shock his experiences and tough choices/actions have on his mortal mind and on how he struggles to reinsert himself into civilised life when he returns from the war, Chris aka The Legend is a strong character, an emotionally complex character.

As Chris takes out bad guy after bad guy, his reputation and his prestige/command builds and improves within the military – the effects of this include an increase in control over his choices, a freedom of movement and higher priority targets.

There isn’t much time to spend on Chris’s emotional plot as the main story is already fairly complicated with his role as a sniper, the complexity of missions and choices in the war and his struggle with civilian life.

I enjoyed this movie as a war movie with something slightly more unique than the rest. It could have been explored more psychologically, or as an adventure story been made more exciting. I felt it was an average intellectual and emotional story about one man’s struggle against experiences that the audience needs to understand, in order to understand the man.

As an intellectual story it wasn’t very intellectual. As an adventure story it wasn’t smart enough. As an emotional story the characters weren’t very deep so the emotion had little to play off.

I think Cooper however, did an excellent job of portraying the emotional plot – which was strong enough, that one could get something out of this film despite its shortcomings. It does feel a bit morally superior like a bad TV movie.

The payoff for the emotional plot is the fact that it’s based on a true story and Chris eventually does seek help and return to his family so he can begin to live life, his mission over.

2.5 stars

Living on One Dollar (2013) - Dir: Ryan Christoffersen and Zach Ingrasci

What would life be like if you had to survive on one dollar per day as your only income? Four middle class, suburban, male, college students travel to a small rural village in Guatemala, called Pena Blanca, to try and answer this question. And also what would it be like to explore that world having come from a life that is so different, so privileged by comparison?

In a similar approach to Freakanomics  and Gang Leader for A Day, these young men find that a real life approach to a real life problem – social economics far below the poverty line, bears much more fruit than the books they’re studying.

Zach Ingrasci and Chris Temple having studied the economics of specific cultures and global economic problems, they decide to try and make a significant difference by taking the problem seriously; they challenge themselves to stay in rural Guatemala for 56 days and attempt to survive the same way the locals are forced to, as locals lack an alternative.

They live on one dollar a day as their only income. Further, one intriguing point about their experiment is that locals don’t always know how much if anything they are going to earn on any one day. So the boys decide to pull a random number from a hat $0-9, which decides their income for that period.

They bring with them two filmmakers: Ryan Christoffersen and Sean Leonard. And the four of them for their time spent, consistently sway between trying desperately to survive, while learning tools from the locals – as well as offering their own tools to those in need. And on the other side of the scale, trying to be genuine with their experiment. If they don’t discover some answers to their questions, it may be because they are not approaching the topic accurately/honestly. And at a vital point they find that they could do more, they re-establish their process. We start to discover what this all means.

Besides the experiment, some of the most useful activities inside the film project are the interviews with the people they meet. They learn what it really does mean to survive in abject poverty. They also learn the difference between an experiment and the lives of the real people who have no choice but to live with it, and who can’t go home afterwards.

Through this journey we meet the young Chino whose family can’t afford to send him to school, but he is bright and optimistic, full of energy and wishes to learn Spanish and English. His dream is to play pro soccer, but he has decided that he will be a farmer. At just twelve years old he has resigned himself to the stark reality of life in his world. And yet you’ll rarely see him not smiling.

Anthony and Rosa, with a full family of their own at 20 years old and barely more than that for Anthony, they count themselves lucky because Anthony is one of the few people who live in this community who has an official job. He is a cleaner.

We meet a local woman who wishes to become a nurse, but can’t afford to go to school. Her family couldn't afford to send her to school when she was a child, so she works on the farm.

The key to the success of the people here are the institutions that have been built to provide micro-loans – just about the only way for these people to work out solutions to move forward with their lives, instead of every day digging a deeper hole in the mud. The ordinary bank loan system here is simply not an option.

The experiment these four boys document is intriguing, interesting and emotional. However, it feels like only one small part of the story.

2.5 stars

Top Five (2014) - Dir: Chris Rock (I Think I Love My Wife)

In this charmingly dull attempt at a subversion of the romantic comedy – we find a story that is neither funny, nor a genuine reflection of love – it is about a comedian, but it is a sad, boring film and though it does take the formula of the romance film and copy and paste structurally onto the screen, all there is to the subversive attempt is to cut off the ending.

The opening sequence of Tropic Thunder (as terrible in its cringe humour, as it is,) more thoroughly explores the themes that this film fails to do in its entire 102 minutes.

Chris Rock is Andre Allen, a successful comedy actor who got his start as a stand-up comedian. He publicly declares that he’s done doing funny movies, after a terrible popcorn trash movie, Hammy the Bear and its many sequels, loved by morons – who at last are the majority.

Some think that he’s tired of making crap films. The truth is he wants to be a serious actor because he doesn’t think he’s funny anymore, now that he's sober.

His first attempt at being a serious actor fails miserably – a film about the uprising of slaves who murder a LOT of white people. Nobody wants to see Allen not being funny.

The core of this story is Allen being interviewed by a (very attractive) New York Times reporter (Rosario Dawson.) Allen doesn’t like reporters, but she promises to do right by him if he gives her some honest answers.

Both the reporter and Allen are alcoholics in recovery – not surprisingly this topic is not explored beyond the surface details that are well known and boring in their lack of insight/depth.

Chris Rock is playing himself, but none of his lines leave any real impact. The interview might be a great puff piece, but the questions and answers are relatively without gravity.

This film expresses nothing very well. It might try to tell a story about a guy who forgets why he loves his work. But if that’s what this film is supposed to be about, then I could let everything else go, to express that sentiment powerfully. It doesn’t. I hated Funny People (2009) but at least there was an attempt there at exploring something, although it covered a lot of the same ground.

Allen is due to be married in the morning to a vapid reality tv star. But he is falling in love with the reporter, (I'm not feeling it, either.) Will the reporter and Allen throw caution to the wind and get together? I don’t know. Do we care? No.

The guy isn’t emotionally invested in the wedding. Is this a natural guy thing? Maybe. But when Chris Rock throws a few lines about it, I don’t believe him – and you’d think being a stand-up he’d be able to rant convincingly on a topic he cares about. We’ve seen him do this plenty of times in comedy shows.

Why does he think a film doesn’t require effective expression? Why does he think when he writes the script and performs the part, that his samey same tried and true so-called story means he can’t effectively express something – an emotion, an idea, a joke, an opinion?

It isn't explicitly stated in the film, but 'top five' refers to your top five favourite rappers. Mine are Rhett and Link, Eminem, Scribe, Savage, Ice T.

0 stars

Last Days Here (2011) - Dir: Demian Fenton and Don Argott

The title remarks upon a 54 year old crack and heroin addict who appears to be on his last legs. Robert Liebling is a fading rock star, who never had his big moment. Pentagram was a heavy metal band described as a street version of Black Sabbath. Liebling was their singer. Despite being an extremely powerful performer and artist – which becomes apparent to all who witness him on stage or on listening to one of his band’s albums, he was also the band’s undoing.

When we first meet Liebling it’s not quite a pathetic picture. It ticks all the boxes for pathetic. An aging child (Peter Pan syndrome,) with no skills or experience to progress him in the job market. No money, drug addict, still living in his parent’s basement. But there is more to Liebling than this position that he has found himself in. He is driven and he is an addict. If he can succeed and if he can kick it, he could be more than what we see. He’s far more interesting and vital as a person than what is granted the title of pathetic loser.

Liebling was unreliable as a performer due mostly to his drug habit. He was disrespectful when others would be cautious. He was a red hot ball of rage, sex, drugs and rock and roll. An artist with integrity; never willing to compromise. That is only part of the reason that their big breaks failed to deliver a rise to fame.

Pentagram did draw a loyal following in the 70’s but the live shows were all disasters – Liebling made sure of that. A fan (Sean Pelletier) who befriended Liebling, believes in him and spends most of the film trying to give Pentagram one last shot at getting a great record made and sold.

This story is a tragedy of what drugs can do to a man. How hard it can be to pick yourself up off the floor. How some semblance of life as an individual, a routine, interaction with society, being productive – can be important, as a way to move forward. For Liebling it’s all about the music, but the other half of his mind responds to this with - Yes, but it’s also all about the woman. And all about the drugs. Not necessarily in that order.

With the importance of this band to the heavy metal genre, it seems like a missed opportunity that this hasn’t equated to record sales. In the film we are introduced to Down’s Phil Anselmo – formerly of Pantera; one of the most successful heavy metal bands of the new age (80's-00s). He approaches Liebling with a genuine offer to make a great record, if he can stay out of trouble and follow through.

Much of the focus of the film seems to be the question – Will Liebling pull it together long enough for one last shot at greatness. Liebling's friend and manager, Pelletier guides most of the interview questions, so it doesn't get deep and probing. The relationship with Liebling's new girlfriend, halfway through the film is barely brushed over. We only know what effect she has on him – giving him a reason to quit drugs, making him feel alive and really start doing something with his life and eventually driving him half crazy.

She gets a restraining order against him, which he ignores and ends up doing jail time. Pelletier puts forward the argument that maybe for right now, this is a good thing. Because instead of being off trying to kill himself with drugs, he's recuperating in a cell.


2.5 stars

A Dangerous Method (2011) – Dir: David Cronenberg (eXistenZ, The Fly)

Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) is mentored by Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) to attempt to study and practice an experimental medical approach called talking therapy. He tries it out on a serious patient, Sabina (Keira Knightly.) She has physical tics and jerks, irrational reactions to the smallest things. When she is committed to the hospital in the beginning - she won’t stop screaming, fighting, struggling, freaking out and laughing hysterically, for the whole trip that we see.

When Jung begins to interview her, she appears to calm down. Her reactions are physical in the jaw, stutters – drawn out and emotionally stretching. She suffers anxiety and at first it’s unclear what else she suffers from. When Jung reaches tough subjects, she is open and honest with him – which surprised me. Perhaps doctors were more trusted back then, even by those suffering paranoid delusions and physically affecting emotional spasms.

When he hits a sore point, she seems to react with fear, with what I thought was the need to urinate or defecate. In fact what she feels is a desperate need to masturbate – and the humiliation related to the fits (and sexually deviant reasons for them) that this brings forth. She is overcome by erotic impulses.

The music and the cinematography are suspenseful and deliberate, but the film is not a thriller; more of an eerie drama about sex and therapy.

The more often she meets with Jung to discuss her problems, the more she appears to heal - towards feeling and being well. Jung also tries to look into what positive social outcomes she could attain; where her interests lie, and therefore what kind of work she might pursue.

She wants to be a therapist, (though I believe the term if it does at this time exist, is still in its infancy,) like Jung. In order to help her, he enables her to assist him on some of his experiments and she proves to be a particularly insightful trainee.

Freud (who believes that all mental illness is sexual in nature) prescribes a friend to Jung’s care. Freud’s friend Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel) is something of a sexual anarchist. He encourages Jung to pursue his private desires to cheat on his wife with his patient Sabina. It becomes blurry which of them is in fact receiving the analysis, Jung or Gross.

Jung finally gives in to the carnal pleasures of Sabina who it seems is in love with Jung. He is her first. The wife (Sarah Gadon) is an unfortunate victim of this betrayal. She loves her husband, does everything to please him and even refuses to lay blame when he cheats, only asks that he return from it, as if it were a bad habit.

The friendship between Jung and Freud which starts so pleasantly and passionately with their thirteen hour discussion of their work, feels a struggle through Freud’s impression of Jung’s mistake in how he treats his women. And through Jung’s insistence that not everything is about sex and that Freud is not his father – a role in the relationship which he seems to resent Freud for attempting to perform.

The film is a serious and affecting expression of analysis, exploring the role of sex in life. And in civilised society.

3.5 stars

Iron Man (2008) - Dir: Jon Favreau (Zathura, Chef, Cowboys & Aliens)

Marvel Comics brings us Iron Man, but without the campiness of your average comic book movie. AC/DC and Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. He’s cool and his wit is quick. His dialogue, though sharp, is possibly too fast to digest every joke. This only appears to be an issue occasionally – it’s because he mumbles. He’s much more difficult to understand in Sherlock Holmes.

The action is gripping and turns with the plot so every fight scene is meaningful, every hit, and every shot. The violence is not gory, directed at a family audience. Jeff Bridges (Obediah Stain) is amazing as the conservative company man to Tony’s brilliant mind and immature behaviour.

Stark’s friend, Rhodey (Terrence Howard) provides an emotional role for a less than intellectually complex adventure movie. I think it was a mistake to replace him with Don Cheadle for the sequel (though I seem to be the only one who noticed.) Apparently Howard wanted more money to come back and the production company refused to pay. You get what you pay for.

The structure of the film is very polished. Setting up the character and danger that forces Tony Stark to change – to take his company in a new direction – to change the world.

He falls into bed with a journalist – it happens so quickly that it’s surprising. She’s alright looking, but she doesn’t have time to impress him with her assets. He could do better. She went to a prestigious university and he’s drunk. She is a conflict toy for him. Apparently that is enough to convince him to seduce her. And she is seduced pretty quickly as well, but then Stark is rich and handsome.

This scene is really the only part of the film that I don’t get.

I’ve never really understood what popular America sees in Gwyneth Paltrow, until Iron Man. Pepper Pots is charming, clever, understated, demure, industrious, polite, funny and a servant. What more could you ask for in a woman. With such a wonderful personality, it becomes easier to find her attractive.

It’s a shame Potts doesn’t get involved in a David Lynch sex scene. (Quick Note: David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive – one of the few great romantic sex scenes in movies.)

I love the technology in this film. Tony’s inventions are consistently impressive to the point of being another character, and in fact are a driving force for the story.

Escaping the cave where the terrorists are keeping Stark captive, is a catalyst for his best invention yet. When he really puts his mind to work, he can change the world.

Fast cars, fast women and heavy metal music.

Howard creates a great, funny, support character for Downey's Stark.

Doctor Yinsen (Shaun Toub) whom Stark meets in his cave, is a friendly character. Likeable enough to motivate Stark to become a better man. These are not deep scenes. There isn’t a deep scene in the entire movie. But it’s a lot of fun.

It almost feels like Macgyver or Batman ’66. The most fun parts are the building of the gadgets and the action sequences where the hero uses them. The story is simple. The story needs to be simple, or so they think, because the target audience is a family audience.

In order to attract their key demographic young males, they’ve stuffed this film with heavy metal, comics, cool rebel rock-star guy who can have any chick he wants, and American politics.

The terrorist villain is somewhat interesting, but even more impressive is the American who hired him to assassinate Stark.

The simple truth is that Iron Man kicks ass. Tony Stark is cool. This movie is fun. It’s an entertaining film and that’s all it is. That's all it needs to be.

3.5 stars