Review: Murder on the Orient Express

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As you’d expect from a billion dollar industry, Hollywood likes to play it safe. Christmas movies at Christmas, blockbusters during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer, romantic movies in February, a horror movie for Halloween. When they do experiment, it’s usually in the form of reviving a genre that’s fallen out of favour: do audiences secretly crave the return of the western? Occasionally these test firings lead to a fully-fledged revival – smart science fiction, usually a rarity at best, has been turning up once a year every year since the success of Gravity – but more often even when they do work they’re seen as a once-off (remember The Lincoln Lawyer?). So the big mystery here is: will Murder on the Orient Express see a revival of the big screen murder mystery?

It’s the 1930s, and after solving a high profile case in Palestine famous detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh, who also directs) – who here seems to operate largely as an agent of the British military – is requested to return to the UK ASAP, which means a last minute seat on the Orient Express. Surrounded by a mix of colourful characters, one stands out: shady US art dealer Edward Ratchett (Johnny Depp), who seems concerned his dubious past is about to catch up with him. The train is stranded in the mountains due to an avalanche, Ratchett is found stabbed to death in his room, and Poriot has a new case to solve – one in which it seems everyone has something to hide.

In today’s multi-media landscape, genres rarely die – they just move to another platform. The murder mystery has been stretching out comfortably on television for the last few decades, so it’s hardly surprising to modern eyes this adaptation (which comes in at under two hours) seems a little rushed, especially with a dozen or so suspects to be dealt with. The mystery itself is skimmed over, perhaps because it’s assumed many viewers already know how it’ll all end: the 1974 adaptation was a huge hit and the story is one of Agatha Christie’s more gimmicky ones (and it doesn’t exactly play fair with those who like to solve the mystery based on all the clues provided), so downplaying that side of things isn’t a fatal flaw.

Branagh instead focuses on charm, starting with his own performance. While there are a few hints at a deeper backstory (a photo of a lost loved one, comments about the curse of always seeing the flaws in the world around him), his Poirot is largely a chipper, charismatic character who’s played big enough to be fun without completely overwhelming the film. As far as the rest of the cast goes, the hammier the performance the better, which puts Leslie Odom Jr. and Daisy Ridley at a disadvantage despite getting a hefty slice of screen time. Judi Dench, Willem Dafoe and Penelope Cruz go hell for leather in their relatively brief on screen moments, but it’s Michelle Pfeiffer who steals the show; with this and her work in Mother!, she’s definitely on the comeback trail.

This is never anything more or less than solidly entertaining, an enjoyable time-waster of a film that’s always nice to look at with a story that requires zero effort to follow (after all, it’s about a man constantly explaining things to everyone around him), a polished mood that moves from the slightly grim to the slightly quirky with nary a bump or rattle, and a conclusion that carries no weight whatsoever. Unless you’re still emotionally involved in the 90 year-old kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, a brutal real-life crime Christie shamelessly used as backstory. Maybe at the time a few readers thought “too soon”; now it’s as bloodless and remote as everything else here.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Suburbicon

White picket fences and mailmen who know your name, this is 1950s suburbia, complete with cookies and milk. It’s also complete with the dark and sinister undertones we’ve come to expect from every contemporary film set in that period. And this is a Coen Brothers production after all (Fargo, No Country for Old Men), with the socially conscious George Clooney (Good Night, and Good Luck, The Ides of March) in the director’s chair. So it isn’t long until big cracks appear in the pastel façade, blood gets spattered on horn-rimmed glasses and some basic social justice messages get smashed home in what feels like a dated and somewhat pointless farce. 

Read the full review by Rochelle Siemienowicz at SBS Movies here.

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20 Feet from Stardom

The history of showbiz is littered with stories of talented people left out of the limelight – valiant professionals whose unsung efforts enabled brighter stars to shine. In this excellent documentary, directed by Morgan Neville and produced by the late A&M Records executive Gil Friesen, the spotlight is turned onto background vocalists, or ‘backup singers’ – the artists whose voices we’ve all heard, bringing life to the hits, but whose faces we’ve never seen.

Those faces, it turns out, are mostly female and mostly black. The daughters of preachers and churchgoers, these women learnt their trade harmonising in choirs and singing Baptist hymns, where the focus was on ‘the blend’ – the joining of many individual voices into a sweet-sounding whole. This mysterious merging is effectively illustrated in the film by a scene featuring the synchronised patterns created by a flock of black birds swooping in unison through a blue sky.
Read the full review by Rochelle Siemienowicz here at SBS Film online.

Farewell My Queen

 

 

Review by Rochelle Siemienowicz

Why do we continue to be fascinated by the doomed and decadent French queen, Marie Antoinette? Cinema and literature keep finding fresh angles to explore and exploit her ongoing charisma, and Benoît Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen provides all the pleasures –  and more – that we expect from this subject. There are extravagantly beautiful costumes, stunning cinematography and visions of lavish excess and emotional intrigue. Most importantly, the film offers insights into the (possible) personality and motivations of Marie, that frivolous and pitiable creature whose pretty neck will always be on the edge of the guillotine when we watch her from our historical vantage point.

Watching the queen is also the chief pleasure and obsession of the film's central character, Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux), a young girl employed in the palace library and called upon regularly to read aloud to the queen. Sidonie's devotion is wonderfully portrayed by Seydoux, whose full-lipped, unmade-up beauty and candid intensity recall a very young Scarlett Johansson (especially in Girl With a Pearl Earring). Rushing along corridors, falling over her skirts in her desperation to please her majesty, Sidonie lives and breathes for the moments she spends in the queen's presence. Meanwhile, Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger) lives and breathes to see and touch her own best friend (and perhaps lover), the pragmatic and cat-eyed Mme. de Polinac (Virgine Ledoyen).
The Sapphic love-triangle element of this plot is never overplayed, though both Sidonie and Marie are shown experiencing all the breathless desperation and anguish of women in love with someone who doesn't return, or deserve, their level of ardour – and the final betrayals are breathtaking. Kruger is brilliant at portraying the young queen's nervy absorption in her own romantic dramas, even as the palace walls are crawling with political turmoil and rumours of beheadings.

Filmed on location at the Palace of Versaille (with cinematography by Romain Winding), and set over the course of a few days leading up to the fall, Farewell My Queen is particularly good at suggesting how separate and removed Versaille remains –  a complex social world unto itself, far from the concerns of the French people, right up until the moment when the gates collapse.

A worthy addition to the collection of films about Marie Antoinette, this one succeeds as the ultimate costume drama – one where the clothes are both sublimely pleasurable to look at and also irreducibly meaningful to the story's progression. The sumptuous costume design is by Valérie Ranchoux & Christian Gasc, with every element describing the characters' journey and psychology, from the single dress owned and adapted by the servant Sidonie, to the fine white linen nightdresses donned by the queen as she lolls about in bed. A special mention has to go to that poisonous green gown (it's almost chartreuse, but not quite) worn in the movie's final scenes and featured in the promotional poster. It's well worth seeing the film to find out exactly why it matters.

(Farewell My Queen - released in Australian cinemas by Transmission on Thursday 6 June 2013)

Rust and Bone

Review by Rochelle Siemienowicz

When disaster befalls us, the pity of others is sometimes the hardest burden to bear. This simple truth forms the premise for Rust and Bone, a sublimely beautiful and surprising tale of friendship, violence, disability and love. When Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) first meets boxer-cum-bouncer Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) they have little in common. He’s a brutish single father on the verge of homelessness; she’s a beautiful and haughty whale trainer. But after a tragic accident, Stephanie finds Ali’s no-nonsense physicality and lack of sympathy a blessed relief. An understanding develops between them, but the progress of this couple’s journey towards intimacy is anything but predictable.

Set in the French Riviera town of Antibes, the film revels in both the sparkling seaside and the ugly economic underbelly of the region. Such contradictions and contrasts abound, for director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet), together with cinematographer Stephane Fontaine and composer Alexandre Desplat, has created a work of art that is simultaneously realist and expressionist; shockingly blunt at times, yet mysterious and profoundly romantic. 

(This review previously appeared in edition 429 of The Big Issue magazine: 29 March - 11 April)

Film review: 21 and Over

Hang on a second: when did March become the month for party movies? Last year we had the aimless, pointless and dull Project X, and this year come March* we get 21 And Over, in which the writers of The Hangover prove they’re not just one-trick ponies by writing (and directing) a movie that’s nothing like The Hangover. For one thing, those guys in The Hangover are way older than 21, right? And sure, this is also a movie about a totally crazy party night in a bunch of guy’s lives, but in The Hangover they were just flashing back to the party the day after, whereas here the party is happening right here and now. Oh, wait, the very start of the movie shows the guys at the end of the night so yeah, in a way this is all one big flashback too.

But this time there’s only two guys: Miller (Miles Teller), the wild, crazy, Jim Belushi knock-off one, and Casey (Sylar Astin), the uptight sensible one. So that bit’s more like Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. They’ve turned up on campus to help their old high school buddy Jeff Chang (Justin Chon) – you won’t forget that name, as they say it at least sixty times during the course of the movie (I counted) in the kind of running joke that’s not really a joke but they sure run with it – celebrate his 21^st, even though his evil dad has told him he has to get up early for a big interview so NO PARTYING. But one drink won’t hurt, right? 

Yeah, right: before long it’s the end of the night, Jeff Chang has passed out (okay, that bit’s like The Hangover too) and his surprisingly sober buddies have to find out where he lives, which is the bit of the film that’s kind of like Dude, Where’s My Car?. Crazy things then happen, but guess what? All the movies this movie is ripping off are better than it, so you’re better off watching them instead. A lot of the crazy stuff here isn’t even that crazy: they have to complete a variety of drinking games to make their way through a multi-story party house, but because our heroes never seem to be affected by alcohol, where’s the drama? 

Various dark hints about Jeff Chang’s current situation (why is he carrying a gun, for starters?) are more dramatic and funny, only the film then wimps out on even the mild drama it’s created for a resolution that’s just a whole bunch of hand waving. But they throw an unconscious guy out a window onto a pool and he goes flying into the bushes! So that bit’s like Weekend at Bernies. On the plus side, Teller is pretty good at selling the average material he’s stuck with here, and there’s just enough chemistry between him and Astin to make it plausible that they’re friends who’ve drifted apart since high school. Oh wait, that doesn’t require any chemistry at all. But they do get to make a couple of hot, blindfolded sorority girls make out! Which is totally worth buying a movie ticket for if you’ve never seen the internet.

*presumably these movies are released in March to teach new university students what is expected of them re: their partying responsibilities. Or, more likely, to torment them with a lifestyle they'll never have, what with having to actually study if they want to have the slightest hope of "making it" in today's post-employment work environment.

The year in films: 2012

Somewhat surprisingly considering how much of my current income is derived from writing Top Ten lists, I don't actually like end-of-year best and worst lists. There are plenty of perfectly valid criteria on which to compare and rank movies (let me know if you think of any funny ones), but "they came out in the same calendar year" never really feels like a good one to me.

Still, it doesn't hurt to look back at the end of the year and take stock of what's gone by, if only to update your shopping list for your next trip to the DVD store. So with the half-hearted introductions out of the way, let me present perhaps the most whishy-washy Best and Worst of 2012 list you'll read this year. By which I mean I didn't even narrow it down to a top ten, I just lumped the good and bad films together in near-arbitrary clumps and left out most of the really recent releases just in case I changed my mind about them (sorry, the most excellent Wreck-It Ralph! Close shave, the unflushable Parental Guidance!). Enjoy!

10) Relationships: A Separation / The Deep Blue Sea / Take This Waltz / Your Sister’s Sister / Jesse & Celeste Forever. Whether you’re falling in love, falling out of love, or are just plain sick of the person you’re in love with, good viewing was the result.

9) Male nudity: Shame / Magic Mike. One is a depressing tale of sex addiction, the other features a lot of shirtless dancing and screaming women. They’re both worth a look for more than the tackle-out action.

8) Kids: Safe / Moonrise Kingdom. Okay, Jason Statham running around with a pre-teen maths wiz and Wes Anderson’s latest tale of melancholy have very little in common apart from the presence of small children in both. But they're still both good films.

7) Hitmen: Looper / Killing Them Softly / The Grey. Okay, Liam Neeson in The Grey was a hitman of wolves, not people. Doesn’t mean that movies about hitmen didn’t do well in 2012.

6) Cops: End of Watch / Dredd / 21 Jump Street / The Raid. Out of these three extremely violent films and one comedy, guess which one had the goriest moment? Wrong: the end of 21 Jump Street was just plain nasty.

5) Robbers: Get the Gringo / Headhunters / Contraband / Bernie. At the other end of the law-enforcement scale, these films proved that committing crimes could be just as entertaining as fighting them.

4) Superheroes: The Avengers / The Dark Knight Rises / Chronicle / Skyfall. Hey, James Bond is as much of a super hero as Batman – he just doesn’t have to wear a silly outfit to save the world. Though Chronicle was the only real surprise of the bunch here, as Hollywood at least has the big budget superhero movie down to a fine, unsurprising, art.

3) Spies: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy / Argo / Haywire. And these guys don’t need any outfits at all to save the world! Not that they weren’t wearing clothes or anything, but, you know, they lurk in the shadows and so on.

2) Comedy: Ted / Bachelorette / Young Adult. This was not a great year for comedy, but at least these three managed to bring the laughs.

1) People in a room: The Master / Margin Call / Carnage. These films may have all been very different from each other, but one thing did unite them: the drama you can create simply by having people in a room talking to each other.

(as for my actual best film of 2012, that's the same as my best film of every year since 1987: Robocop)

But just in case you were thinking 2012 was the dawn of some kind of new golden age of cinema after all that praise, rest assured the stench of utter rubbish continued to billow out of cinemas at a steady rate. Especially cinemas screening the following, for which it was a very bad year…

10) Science Fiction: Prometheus / The Darkest Hour / Total Recall. In theory it’s possible to tell a science fiction story without, you know, just completely making all of the science up. Not that you’d know it from these films.

9) Australasian Comedy: Any Questions For Ben / Two Little Boys / Kath & Kimdrella / Mental / Housos Versus Authority. Anyone remember when Australia used to make funny films? Anyone? Didn’t think so.

8) American Comedy: The Watch / That’s My Boy / American Pie Reunion / The Five Year Engagement. American big screen comedy seems to have come to a screeching halt. Five seconds after it ran off a cliff.

7) Fantasy sequels: Underworld / Resident Evil / MiB III / Paranormal Activity 4. The fun of a movie where you’re just making stuff up is that the stuff you’re making up is surprising and new. If you’re doing sequels, you’re doing it wrong - especially with horror, where "the same old shit" really is just plain shit.

6) Big name directors: Savages (Oliver Stone) / Dark Shadows (Tim Burton) / Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg). Yeah, just retire already. Well, not you Cronenberg, at least you're still trying new things that only kind of don't quite work. But you other two, don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out.

5) Big Budget Spectaculars: Battleship / Wrath of the Titans. You cost how much money now? At least John Carter was trying to tell a story...

4) Highbrow guff: A Dangerous Method / The Words / Holy Motors / Beasts of the Southern Wild. Actually, most of these movies weren’t all that bad really (apart from The Words, which was just plain rubbish). They just weren’t anywhere near as smart as they thought they were.

3) Giving love a bad name: What to Expect When You’re Expecting / This Means War / The Vow. Seriously, if you go see Hollywood romantic comedies at this stage of humanity's existence you get exactly what you deserve

2) Musicals: Rock of Ages. In which Tom Cruise sang part of a musical number into a woman’s arse. Though I didn't enjoy Les Mis all that much either.

1) And the worst film of 2012 was… Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Presumably the title was meant as a warning as to what it was going to feel like being in a room with the amazingly annoying quasi-teenage lead as he wandered around post 9/11 New York refusing to shut the hell up. There are plenty of "bad" films I enjoyed (how did I fail to mention Step Up 4: Miami Heat?), and plenty of boring films I can see have merit: this was the only film that left me actually angry over how much time I'd wasted watching it.

Anthony Morris