The Big Short – big fun

The Big Short unashamedly dumbs things down, to the point where Selena Gomez explains to the camera how collateralized debt obligations work. It’s silly and sometimes a bit too stupid, but fair play to the filmmakers for trying to make people understand something that we all really should understand for our own good.

In 2005 fund manager and market genius Michael Burry (Christian Bale) has a hunch the housing market is going to collapse despite being called an idiot. No one bets against property, until now. Soon he’s followed by a group of other traders including Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt who realise how fickle the system is and bet on it all falling down. They stand to make a lot of money if right, but al at the expense of people’s homes and jobs.

There’s nothing here you want learn from a documentary but let’s be honest, a lot of people couldn’t be bothered watching a documentary. The Big Short gives Alex Gibney the Family Guy treatment resulting in a film that even the biggest idiot will come out of a better person due to learning something. It’s a fun watch with fun characters, with director Adam McKay doing a good job finding the right tone.

It moves fast, is never dull, and when it does all fall down McKay deals with the shift in tone brilliantly. Hopefully this sees the director embark on a new genre of comedies with serious subjects.

3 out of 5

The Revenant – failed Terence Malick tribute

Somewhere in The Revenant is a great revenge thriller but director Alejandro G. Iñárritu drowns that film in his own ego. The film meanders from brutal action to emotional dream sequence/flashback without ever really making us feel anything. Terence Malick he is not, despite how much he tries.

Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is part of a 19^th century expedition into the wilderness of America led by Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson). It’s rugged and cold with the locals as harsh as the landscape. Glass is left on the brink of death after being attacked by a bear and soon finds himself abandoned by the two men left to nurse him, including John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). After a miraculous recovery Glass embarks on an epic journey to get back to civilisation and have his revenge.

That’s really all there is. Iñárritu hints at emotions with rousing music and over lit dreams but cowers before ever committing to them hoping the audience will feel some connection to the music video extracts. We don’t, leaving us with a film slight on story but thick with fat. It’s too long, too indulgent and never as entertaining as it thinks it is. Yes it’s shot brilliantly, even if the CG is often too obvious. Iñárritu has mastered camerawork we know that from Birdman but he still seems determined to push his new tricks in our face.

Hardy is bad, real bad. The character is paper thin and his mumbling dialogue leaves us with a one dimensional dick head, nothing more to him. DiCaprio probably deserves to win an Oscar and sure why not he’s waited long enough. It’s a shame he didn’t get it for something more deserving like The Wolf of Wall Street instead of this though. His role is reduced to shivering for most of the films way too long two and a half hours.

For a film that prides itself on its nightmare shoot in the depths of winter it takes a lot of conveniences. Glass pretty much ‘walks off’ an ankle twisted 180 degrees in a matter of days. He sleeps in soaking wet freezing clothes but barely gets a sniffle. It’s based on a true story that didn’t need any exaggeration but Hollywood doesn’t care.

It looks great and the set pieces are fantastic, but that’s it. It fails completely to connect emotionally leaving us with a very dull and overlong film.

2 out of 5

Room – worthy Oscar contender

I’ve seen every Lenny Abrahamson film in the cinema and I can remember twelve years ago sitting in a cinema in Dublin watching Adam & Paul and thinking “take note – this man is no flash in the pan.” After the excellent Garage, a film that deserves to be listed among the greatest of all time, it was confirmed. Abrahamson never got ahead of himself though, even 2015’s Frank was still quite an independent film, much the same as Room, which although an Oscar-contender it feels more like an exceptionally well made and acted indie film that anything Hollywood could possibly make.

Based somewhat on the Fritzl case, Ma (Brie Larson) is trapped in a soundproofed shed where she is visited nightly by her captor Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) to give her supplies and rape her before leaving and locking the door behind him. She’s not alone though, she has a five-year-old son named Jack (Jacob Tremblay) by Old Nick and despite their bleak situation she is determined to shelter him from their harsh reality. Jack has never seen outside and is perfectly content in “Room”, watching the magic people on TV unaware of anything else. Ma is getting concerned though and needs to get her and Jack out before their mental and physical health is damaged. She hatches a plan, but will it work? And if it does how will Jack cope outside of “Room”?

It’s all excellent. The acting, the music, the lighting, everything. There is nothing to fault here. Abrahamson knows how to get amazing performances out of his cast and Room is him doing that on an Oscar scale. A lot of well-deserved attention has been put on Brie and rightly so, that Oscar should be hers. Tremblay is excellent too, with one of the best child performances seen on screen. For me the real exception was Joan Allen as Ma’s mother. It’s short and subtle but she makes a massive impact in a film already overridden with great performances.

It’s a technical challenge to convey a film as claustrophobic as Room, giving both happy and sad emotions, as well as terror, into one small area. Abrahamson uses excellent camera work and music to tackle this and really succeeds. We understand Ma’s terror of Room but also Jack’s feelings of safeness.

It’s never horrific, which some people may think is Abrahamson cowering away from the reality of the situation. There is no brutal rape scenes, no beating, only silhouettes seen through a wardrobe. This isn’t a story about that, this is a story about Jack, and we see everything through his eyes. Like Ma protects Jack from the true horrors so we don’t see them, but being an audience we are aware, our brains connect, Abrhamason respects they will.

Absolutely excellent, more Abrahamson films please, right now.

5 out of 5

The Hateful Eight – semi-successful experiment from Tarantino

Tarantino taking his time can be both a beautiful but sometimes boring thing. Fair play to the man for stepping back from the kinetic energy of dialogue and camera cuts he’s known for and giving us what is essentially a well-shot play. It is something we don’t always see in cinema and given how often challenging it can be on our patience it’s a good job that Tarantino is the man making it, but not long after seeing The Hateful Eight I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed he hadn’t made something else instead.

It’s cold in 19^th century Wyoming, and its plastered all over The Hateful Eight. Bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) waits on a snowy mountain pass with three dead bodies, looking to hitch a ride to Red Rock to claim his bounty. Soon he is picked up by the enigmatic John Ruth (Kurt Russell) another bounty hunter transporting fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) again to Red Rock to claim the bounty. Ruth could easily kill Domergue, but given he likes to “keep the hangman in business” he makes a deal with Warren to help him protect her until she’s ready to be hung. Eventually the pair and a few other colourful characters are forced to take shelter in Minnie’s Haberdashery, a stagecoach lodge, where several other curious types have taken refuge. Before long mistrust is high and a rat is detected in the group, leading to the Tarantino staple of bloodshed and foul language.

Despite being very slow the first half of the film is when Tarantino shows great maturity in his work, letting the dialogue and build-up breathe, really taking the audience in to the place and time. Everything from the excellent score to the beautiful cinematography gets a chance to overwhelm us. As the characters are introduced it slowly lets them take over which is fine at first, but when the second half shenanigans of shoot outs and vomiting begins we still haven’t really learnt that much about them to really care, despite the fact it’s taken almost two hours to get to this point.

I rarely say these words but Samuel L. Jackson is excellent in this film. He’s an actor I’m usually bored of but in The Hateful Eight he managed to surprise me, hopefully more of this from him. Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh also do great jobs but for the most part most of the other minor players never make too much of an impression. The Hateful Five may have allowed a more memorable cast.

It’s still Tarantino and it’s still impressive, just not what you might hope he might have spent his time and talent on.

3 out of 5