Thriller
The Nice Guys
Director: Shane Black (2016)
Since his first writing success with Mel Gibson’s Lethal Weapon (1987), writer/director Shane Black has spent his career creating crowd pleasing action comedies.
After recent blockbuster superhero success with Iron Man 3 (2013) he’s back with another smartly written, explosive and character driven adventure, riffing on Los Angeles detective noir such as Chinatown (1974) LA Confidential (1997) and The Big Lebowski (1998), among many others.
If you’re as in the dark to what’s going on as the dimwitted detective duo, don’t worry. An opaque plot is a vital element of the genre. Other hallmarks present and correct are the voice over, a dead glamour model, a bag of cash, sinister doctors and a corporate conspiracy.
In typical style Black ramps up the action but finds his normally sharp comic dialogue is subdued by the pot headed sun kissed California vibe. Nor can he resist including an unnecessary trademark Christmas scene.
However Black’s writing has reached sufficient maturity to splice together porn movies and car adverts in a scathing commentary of both industries.
Plus a degree of satirical self knowledge is needed to write a script set in Hollywood where a character dodges bullets to save a canister of celluloid of utmost importance to solving a murder.
Heavy weight Russell Crowe teams up with a comically dim Ryan Gosling as the ironically titled leads.
As mismatched down market private detectives Healy and March, they’re employed to solve the case of a missing teenager in 1970’s Los Angeles.
Though a pair of cynical, violent alcoholics in true noir style, this is disguised by their easy screen charisma and laid back chemistry.
Kim Basinger and Margaret Qualley are strong support as a mother and daughter at the centre of the story.
Our point of view of proceedings is guided by March’s 13 year old daughter Holly. Angourie Rice is terrific as the bright, brave, street wise moral conscience of the film.
Her sweet nature proves these nice guys aren’t all bad and Black is continuing to improve.
★★★★☆
Green Room
Director: Jeremy Saulnier (2016)
Plastered with gob, guts, groupies and guns, a punk band are torn apart by more than creative differences in this excoriating neo nazi thriller.
Suitably nihilist in attitude and stripped back in construction, it’s a visceral mosh pit of strip lighting, stanley knifes, and shotguns.
The Ain’t Rights are a penniless four piece band who have run out of money and luck. So they accept a gig in a nightclub in rural Portland where the clientele is described as boot and braces. The decor is confederate flags and swastikas.
When the band witness a crime they barricade themselves inside the Green Room backstage hospitality area, a grim concrete box with only one exit.
Pat is the band’s reluctant spokesman who’s played with nervous energy by Anton Yelchin, best known as Chekov from Star Trek (2009).
He attempts to negotiate with Darcy, the owner of the club while waiting for the police to arrive. Fellow Star Trek alumnus Patrick Stewart brings gravitas to his role and projects a majestic menace while whispering assurances from behind a locked door.
It’s noticeable how well he and another Brit Imogen Poots under play their lines to great effect. She plays Amber, a bystander caught up in events.
This is a welcome return to form for an engaging talent who has made some recent poor choices in Need For Speed (2014) and A Long Way Down (2014).
A smart script makes the characters endearing enough for us to root for them and peppers the dialogue with comic pop culture references.
Discussion about expenditure and fire hazards ground the events in the real world and hints at a critique of capitalism exploiting political foot soldiers for its own ends.
The band want out and Darcy wants them dead. The music and mayhem are turned up to 11.
★★★★☆
Friend Request
Director: Simon Verhoeven (2016)
This silly horror show about internet stalking opts for cheap slasher action and ignores the very real dangers of the virtual world.
Lurking at it’s dark heart is a cabal of well worn ideas such as secret sects and black magic.
Wasps buzz angrily and the scrabbly screechy soundtrack is laden with ominous echoes.
Alycia Debnam-Carey stars as student Laura who accepts a social media friend request from classmate Marina, played by pallid Liesl Ahlers.
When the lonely goth commits suicide on camera, Laura’s social media account takes on a life of its own, publishing the video and offensive messages.
As Laura’s friends suffer violent deaths, she must turn cyber sleuth to save herself and importantly, her diminishing online popularity.
It’s difficult to work out if the pair of cops investigating the case are a signifier of satirical intent. There are numerous unintentional laughs.
Presumably in a bid to prevent legal problems, the specific social media site is never identified and the F word is never mentioned. But I could think of a few.
★☆☆☆☆
Midnight Special
Director: Jeff Nichols (2016)
This downbeat road trip takes you on a mild goose chase with no particular place to go.
A messiah metaphor without a message, the story is bogged down by it’s own dour incoherence.
Stern Michael Shannon and vulnerable Jaeden Lieberher play Roy and Alton, a father and son on the run.
Alton is considered a weapon by the FBI and a saviour by the cult his father has just escaped him from.
Alton’s speaking in tongues has revealed location to which they are heading, but time is running out.
With his health is worsening, Alton has to wear goggles and headphones for protection – except for when he doesn’t.
Kirsten Dunst and Joel Edgerton offer solid support while Adam Driver brings as much humour to the role of an FBI analyst as he dare smuggle in.
Every line of dialogue is delivered with ponderous import but script has nothing to say about religion, belief or faith.
Car chases and shoot outs compete with earthquakes, meteor showers and power cuts but due to Alton’s increasing cosmic powers, there’s not much tension.
★★☆☆☆
Victoria
Director: Sebastian Schipper (2016)
A schnapps swigging clubber is swept up by criminals in this suffocating German thriller.
Laia Costa gives a virtuosa performance as the vivacious Victoria. Her engaging elfin spirit is the damaged flip side of Audrey Tautou’s ingenue in Amelie (2001).
There’s shades of epics such as Arthur Penn’s Bonnie And Clyde (1967) Michael Mann’s Heat (1995) in the story of likeable people doing bad deeds.
Breathtaking artistic and technical ambition surpasses the dexterity of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s faux single shot Oscar winner Birdman (2014).
Deliriously filmed in a single extended shot, the dizzying camerawork of Sturla Brandth Grovlen sweeps us around the clubs, cafes and corner shops of Berlin in real time.
As the characters dance, run and drive beside us, it creates an emotional connection and makes us complicit in their crimes.
The lighting, performances and dialogue are washed in naturalism, offering the impression of organic relationships and behaviour. Masterful use of music and sound mixing are key to the increasingly fraught and menacing atmosphere.
A chance meeting with four dubious local charmers leads Victoria to an impromptu after hours rooftop birthday party. Conversation is conducted in broken English as they steal, fight, smoke, drink and flirt.
Victoria’s evening becomes something wild when a phone call leads to her involvement in an armed raid.
With drugs, guns, blackmail and bloodshed at every turn, the young girl needs all her wits to survive as poor choices lead to increasingly desperate options and jaw clenching tension.
Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski, Max Mauff and Burak Yigit offer strong support but it’s Costa who steals our heart and the film.
★★★★★
A War
Director: Tobias Lindholm (2016)
Guns, grenades and gavels will shred your nerves in this riveting courtroom drama set in the Afghan war.
An army commander is looking down the barrel of a long prison sentence for killing civilians in the act of saving his men.
A smart script gives meaning to the intense battle scenes and the film is always sympathetic to the soldiers.
We fear for the soldiers, worry for the dirt-poor locals and agonise for the families back home.
Danish duo Tobias Lindholm and Pilou Asbaek team up for the second time as director and star respectively.
They previously collaborated on the gripping A Hijacking (2013) where Asbaek played a ship’s captain held hostage by Somali pirates.
A Hijacking was followed into cinemas by Paul Greengrass’ similar though not superior Captain Philips (2013) which starred Tom Hanks.
As well as directing, Lindholm also writes his own scripts and was responsible for writing the Mads Mikkelson drama The Hunt (2012).
All three scripts feature men under intense pressure stemming from decisions made under stress at work.
Asbaek plays Company Commander Claus Pedersen. He is brave and devoted leader of his team, accompanying them on patrol to restore moral after the loss of one of his men to an IED.
Gallows humour peppers the dialogue and there is an absolute lack of gung ho jingoism.
The tumult of a firefight is created with great sound editing, dust clouds and frantic camerawork.
Having the cast scream at each other in their native Danish adds to the turmoil.
The Taliban are a mostly unseen if ferocious enemy, portrayed by the chaos and death they cause. Their victims are all too easily identifiable.
There are no overt political points being made but the mere presence of Danish nationals patrolling the plains of Afghanistan is a defiantly curious phenomenon.
I spent a lot of time urging them to keep their bloody heads down – while I crouched behind the back of the chair in front.
Being in court is more stressful than the battleground for the heroic Claus. His fight on either front will keep you gripped.
★★★★☆
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Infini
Director: Shane Abbess (2015)
Daniel MacPherson gives an aggressively agitated performance as a marooned musclebound marine in this sci-fi thriller.
Sent to investigate a lethal biological outbreak, Whit Carmichael beams out to the galaxy’s most distant off-world mining-facility, leaving behind his pregnant wife.
Whit’s’s followed by an elite Search and Rescue team and together they must prevent the biohazard from reaching Earth.
It’s gruesome, violent and sadly derivative.
There’s impressive design throughout and it differentiates nicely between down here and out there.
However the use of JJ Abrams’ lens flare is one of many visual lifts from other, stronger films, such as Blade Runner (1982) and Aliens (1986).
Occasionally the Aussie writer-director over complicates his camerawork and there’s much pointing of guns while walking down corridors.
Plus it has much leaping out of dark spaces while soldiers take turns to out grunt each other.
At times the exposition is as cumbersome as a spacesuit and there’s a vacuum where characters should be.
Time is stretched for Whit due to the deep distances travelled. Similarly the film has nice moments but some very long minutes.