A Most Violent Year.

Directed, produced and written by J C Chandor A Most Violent Year (2014) is a crime drama set in New York City during the winter of 1981 said to be one of the most violent in the city's history. Our story involves Abel Morales, a man with ambition who wants to expand his heating oil company by purchasing a dual oil terminal on the East River. This will allow him to get one over on his competitors by allowing him to directly import fuel oil from barges and to store more oil in the summer months when the price is low. Placing a down payment of 40% on the property with an agreement that the outstanding amount must be settled in 30 days otherwise he looses both the property and his deposit. But Morales has a problem in that his Standard Oil Company is being plagued by the hijacking of several of his trucks and their cargo of oil stolen, a problem that’s making it harder to raise the money for the outstanding 60%.

Morales business is not going to plan....

A grand cast makes this crime drama very easy to enjoy. Oscar Isaac, whose performance in the Coen Brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) won him many plaudits plays Morales 'a good man who deserves respect' with the very attractive Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty 2012) as his wife Anna a woman that would sooner dispense with arbitration replacing it with pure old fashioned violence. David Oyelowo seen recently in Selma (2014) where he played Martin Luther King Jnr is an Assistant District Attorney determined to expose price fixing, tax evasion and other illegalities involving the heating oil business in general and Morales in particular.

 

....he should let his wife sort it out!

The film has a cracking musical score composed by Alex Ebert, and has been deservedly nominated for whole clutch of film awards. As I said a film to enjoy and one that grows on you as the story unfolds. Commendably it down plays the violence normally associated with this type of film with Chandor attempting to put across the idea that violence is contagious but all the same it’s a good atmospheric thriller and one I can certainly recommend.

Texas Killing Fields.

What are the Texas Killing Fields? According to the trailer for the film since 1971 over 60 young women have disappeared, believed to have been murdered, and disposed of in an area bordering the Calder Oil Field, a 25-acre piece of land situated not far from the southern end of Texas City and a mile from Interstate 45, a stretch of road allegedly known as the highway of hell due to the high rate of traffic accidents. When you look up this area on the Internet you find that approximately 30 bodies have been discovered in the fields, mainly consisting of young girls between the ages of 10-25 many have similar physical features including similar hairstyles. Also the majority of the bodies were found next to water, leading to speculations that that a serial killer had been at work! Incidentally very few of the murder cases have been solved.

 

The Fields hide many secrets.

Directed by Michael Mann’s daughter Ami Canaan Mann with a screenplay by Federal Agent Donald Ferrarone, Texas Killing Fields (2013) is loosely based on the real events but focusing mainly on the two real life Detectives involved in the case Brian Goetschus and Mike Land, called Brian Heigh (Jeffery Dean Morgan) and Mike Soulder (Sam Worthington) in the adaptation. Worthington has been quoted as saying that this movie was made to raise awareness about the crimes and maybe bring fresh evidence to light. Unfortunately the movie has reawakened bad memories and mixed emotions for the families of the victims.

 

Just some of the victims. 

To be honest and despite being shot in Louisiana and having a very good cast, which as well as Dean Morgan and Worthington we have Jessica Chastain playing the hard bitten Detective Pam Stall, 14 year old Chloe Grace Moretz playing the ‘nearly’ victim Anne Sliger and our very own Stephen Graham playing a low life character called Rhino, the film is a little disappointing and certainly not as good as the not dissimilar The Frozen Ground (2013) or Memories of Murder (2003). It has a rather muddled narrative and the lack of any real tension or suspense does nothing to help its case. Other than Anne no other character deserves our empathy, in fact the movie is full of awful nasty people who according to this portrait frequent the lower echelons of American society and the police force. Sorry but two hours of your viewing pleasure would be better directed elsewhere!   

Zero Dark Thirty.

Another lengthy film at this week’s Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club, but one that certainly justified its running time. Billed as the greatest manhunt in history for the world’s most dangerous man and introduced by Alec Barclay to a capacity audience. The award winning Zero Dark Thirty (2012) was a tense and exciting watch (even if we did know the ending) that every body seemed to appreciate. It dramatizes the USA’s decade long hunt and subsequent execution of Osama bin Laden leader of a multinational, stateless army known as al-Qaeda who carry out a physical struggle against those they see as enemies of Islam.

Kathryn Bigelow.

The film was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who was jointly responsible for the production, with the writer of the screenplay, Mark Boal, the same team that collaborated on the Oscar winning film[1] The Hurt Locker (2009). Alec explained to the RBC audience that Bigelow and Boal were in the process of making a film based on the unsuccessful attempt to find bin Laden, and the screenplay was virtually complete when in May 2011 it was announced that bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan. At first it appeared as though they had got a good third act, but this finally became the whole story. Boal was an experienced war correspondent before becoming a screenwriter, and the story is strongly based on his skills as an investigative journalist. Alec went on to explain that the film opened to very mixed responses, with some critics being very vitriolic in their condemnation of the scenes featuring the torture of suspects. The controversy about torture is that some critics (political as well as journalists) saw the film as advocating the success of torture as a means of gaining useful information. In America the hawks branded the director a traitor while doves suggest she supports the efficacy of torture.[2] Even John Pilger wrote that Zero Dark Thirty promotes torture and murder and is directed by, someone he calls ‘the Leni Riefenstahl of our time, promoting her master's voice as did the Fuhrer's pet film-maker’

A group of senators claim that, Zero Dark Thirty makes the ‘clear implication’ that intelligence derived from enhanced interrogations eventually led to finding bin Laden. In a letter to Sony they state: ‘we are fans of your movies and we understand the special role that movies play in our lives, but the fundamental problem is that people will believe that the events it portrays are facts. The film therefore has the potential to shape American public opinion in a disturbing and misleading manor’. As well as the controversy about the films depiction of torture an Academy voter also urged fellow members not to cast a Best Picture vote for the film (American politics!).  

The American administration watch as the action unfolds.

Remarking that the film reportedly appears to take a morally neutral tone to torture, Alec told us that the director states in its defence that she was,’ trying to capture the essence of this decade. Capturing it in a way that would stand the test of time and had we omitted the harsh tactics that would have been whitewashing history. It was definitely a part of that past (administration), but there were many tactics used that resulted in finding the compound in Abbottabad’.

bin Laden is dead........

.......or is he?

Personally I think that the torture scenes are an integral part of the story, but the film makes it quite clear that the use of ‘enhanced interrogations’ did not enable the CIA to track down bin Laden, that, if the film is to be believed, was down to a junior assistant finding overlooked information contained in a discarded file. If you can separate the politics from the film, difficult I know, you end up with a very thrilling and enjoyable movie.

Navy Seals storm bin Laden compound.

Golden Globe winner Jessica Chastain. 

The movie received 5 Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing and Best Sound Editing. But in the end only shared the Oscar for Best Sound Editing with Skyfall. In The Golden Globe Awards Jessica Chastain, who plays the CIA agent Mia, was deservedly given the accolade for being the Best Actress.

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[1] Kathryn Bigelow won the Academy Award for Best Director and the film won the Academy Award for Best Picture

[2] Jeff Sawtell 24 Jan 2013

The Tree of Life.

Earths Beginnings.

The Meaning of life?

I can categorically state that Terrence Malick’s latest movie, his first for six years, is strangely different from many other movies you would have seen.  Amongst a great deal of critical controversy The Tree of Life (2010) won this years Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s a film full of wonderful images with marvellous use of sound and developed from three separate narratives. The central story is of a middle class family, mum, dad and three boys living in late 1950’s Waco Texas. Mr O’Brien (Brad Pitt) is head of the family; a disciplinarian who seems to believe in the old adage that its best to be cruel to be kind. A man who gave up a musical career to become a manager at the local oil plant. Mrs O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) dotes over her three boys, not always supporting her husband in his strictness regime, and who along with the boys, enjoys a certain amount of freedom when her husband is away on his long business trips. The families story is revealed via the present day, recounted through by the troubled eldest son Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn) now an architect working in a high-rise glass tower in Dallas. Looking back at his childhood he relates how the death of his youngest brother at the age of nineteen effected him greatly, an incident that casts a great shadow over the complete film. Jacks subconscious wants nothing more than the whole family to be reunited. The most surreal section of the film is the imagery showing the inception of earth and the origins of life. Malick successfully works the sections together, but not in the form of a linear narrative.

The movie begins with a quotation from the Bible’s Book of Job “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding, who determined its measurements – surely you know” A film full of spiritual symbolism and as one critic commented ‘rich in prayer and beauty’ which is emphasised for me by the gentle acting of Jessica Chastain as mother and wife, a character that seems to float rather than move through the film. As I said in my opening this is not your standard Picture House fodder, it’s a movie that viewers will have to assess themselves. Malick posses the question, why and for what do we exist? No two people will draw the same concussions. In my opinion the answer he gives, is family, that vague dream of happiness that we sometimes allow ourselves and maybe success in life. I would be interested to know what you think!!