Maps to the Stars.

“Hollywood is a world that is seductive and repellent at the same time, and it is the combination of the two that makes it so potent.”[1] David Cronenburg latest cinematic outing is a comment on human nature, part satirical sendup of Hollywood, part dysfunctional family drama and part decent into madness. It was Ben Wagner’s screenplay that persuaded the Canadian director to make a film about Los Angeles located amongst Hollywood personalities.  Maps to the Stars (2014) is Cronenburg’s first film shot in the USA although many have been set there.

The jaded movie star.

The pyromaniac. 

Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore) was a famous actress who is now aging and quickly fading, a women haunted by memories of her mother a famous movie star who abused her as a child to such an extent that she is still having therapy years after her mother died in a fire.  But this does not stop her wanting to play her mater in a remake of one of her most famous movies. The other main characters belong to the family Weiss. Father Sanford (John Cusack) is a celebrity TV psychologist, a man who see’s himself as a healer and who, incidentally, is in control of Havana’s therapy. Sanford and his wife Christina (Olivia Williams) are sister and brother; they were separated at birth and discovered their true relationship after meeting in college and becoming a couple. Christina also act’s as the manager of her precocious 13 year old son Benjie (Evan Bird), who after a stint at rehab when he was nine years old is attempting to put his movie career back on track while at the same time battling his demons. In to this potent mix we add Benjie’s sister Agatha (Mia Wasikowska) who has recently been released from a sanatorium where she was treated for criminal pyromania. Turning up in LA unannounced, still carrying the visible scars of her crime, she gets a job as the personnel assistant of Havana and attempts to re-engage with her family.

The healer who married his sister.

The manager who married her brother.

One very precocious brat. 

The strength of the film is in Wagner’s characters, the pull that LA has on them and finally how the narrative gradually reveals there complicated lives, secrets and fears. As well as a comedic tone there is a darkness that runs right throughout the movie with its unsettling observation of celebrity culture. This entertaining cross between Sunset Boulevard (1950) and 1999’s Magnolia won Julianne Moore yet another best actress award this time at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.

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[1] David Cronenberg.

The Frozen Ground.

‘Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves’ this quote from Matthew chapter 10 verse 16 opens Scott Walker’s (not the singer dummy!) debut directorial feature film outing The Frozen Ground (2013) which is based on the real-life manhunt for serial killer Robert Hansen. Between 1971 and 1983 Hansen murdered between 17 and 21 young women in or near Anchorage Alaska. He kidnapped them and took them out to the Alaskan wilderness, let them go and then hunted them down, killing them with his hunting rifle and then burying them.

Also written by Walker, this American thriller is undercut with a relationship drama built on trust, between the seventeen-year-old pole dancer and prostitute Cindy Paulson and the investigating officer Sergeant Jack Holcombe, who was based on real life policeman Glenn Flothe, played by stony faced Nicholas Cage, a man who became obsessed with solving the murders and putting the killer behind bar’s. It was Paulson who was Hansen first victim to ever escape and report to the police, she told them that she had been offered $200 to perform oral sex, but when she got into the car Hansen pulled a gun on her and drove her to his home in Muldoon; there, he held her captive, torturing, raping, and sexually assaulting her. She escaped while Hansen was trying to load her into a vehicle. 

 

The wonderful Vanessa Hudgens plays Cindy Paulson.

This was a horrendous murder case whose victims were young girls that ‘respectable’ society looked down upon while allowing one of its ‘respectable’ citizens to take full advantage of a system that did not protect its sex workers. Robert Hansen, wonderfully underplayed by John Cusack, was a complex character, a church going family man, married with a child, and a well-liked everyman in the community where he lived. But a ruthless individual who planned his killing’s down to the last detail.

 

Robert Hansen hunts his victims!

Because of its dark subject matter and the fact that it was based on real characters Walker had to tell the story with respect for the victims and their families. He also manages to avoid portraying the police involved in the investigation as heroes, just ordinary men and women doing the job they are paid for. The film also attempts to give you an understanding of what motivates a man to carry out such cruelty, but I’m not sure it succeeds, as this is an unachievable task and do we really ever know why such men carry out a series of killings, other than perhaps for sexual gratification?

 

A special relationship builds between Cindy and the Police Sergeant.

Vanessa Hudgens, who plays Cindy Paulson, had to meet the real Cindy to understand fully the complexities of the character she was to play. Paulson told her the reason she stuck with the investigation and was willing to be a witness for the prosecution was she felt that she represented all the victims that were unable to have their say. Cindy Paulson was typical of the victims in that she had run away from home when she was eleven and by the time she was thirteen she was on the streets.

 

Will Jack Holcombe get his man?

Although this movie was not very well received by the critics it certainly has some very commendable points. Vanessa Hudgens is totally believable in the role Paulson and to my mind deserved recognition in the awards season. Also DOP Patrick Murguia handling of the cold dark isolated feel to the location shooting allowed the bleak atmospherics to almost become an accomplice in Hansen’s horrendous crimes. The final word must go to the director ‘perhaps the film will make audiences think more about the people on the streets, the girls, the homeless, that they are real people who were once part of a family’

The Paperboy.

The very charming Charlotte Bless.

Directed by Lee Daniels, best known for the award-winning Precious (2009), The Paperboy (2012) has had very mixed reviews but most agree that the best thing about the film is Nicole Kidman. In it she plays Charlotte Bless, a deliciously trashy 40-year-old blond who falls for a prisoner on death row that she has been corresponding with and although she has never met the man they are engaged to be married.  Her role certainly deserved some recognition for Best Actress at the big award ceremonies but as usual she didn’t get it.

Ward Jensen interviews Hillary von Wetter.

Based on a novel of the same name by American author Pete Dexter it’s mainly located in the simmering sun drenched swamps of Louisiana in 1969. Hillary van Wetter (John Cusack) is on death row for the murder of Thurmond Call an unscrupulous local sheriff who it is alleged killed a cousin of van Wetter. Charlotte Bless requests the help of two Miami Times investigative journalists, Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey) and the Englishman Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo), to prove that her beloved is innocent and should be released from prison so she can marry him. Ward, who is determined to get to the truth, is back on his home turf were his father and brother Jack (Zac Efron) are still living. Jack, who is to drive the two out of town reporters, has fallen in love with the sexpot Charlotte, which, as usual with matters of the heart, complicates things.    

Charlotte Bless pleads van wetter's case.

Its not as if this gothic thriller is not enjoyable, as I have already pointed out the acting from our leading lady is, as Peter Bradshaw put it in his Cannes review, “terrifically good, funny, sexy, and poignantly vulnerable” Macy Grey is very amusing at Anita the family’s maid who also narrates the story. John Cusack is scary as van Wetter and the other three main stars play their parts effortlessly. But, yes there is a but, the film is flat, and by that I mean it does not move you, its unemotional, but if you like your movies to be fun and somewhat raunchy then give it a try.

Who's taking who for a ride?

The Raven 2011.

The Raven.

It worry’s me greatly when two very intelligent young men, who views I normally respect, declare, during the Film Club’s discussion, that cinemas are no longer able to sell tickets for a good quality adult movie! They also informed us that the biggest market is for youth orientated movies and the ‘safe’ type of film that appeals to what’s referred to as the ‘grey pound’. The only reason for this ridiculous state of affairs is obviously brainwashing!  Indoctrinating the young popcorn demographic into accepting more and more second rate American unintelligent rubbish until they think this is all that’s on offer. A successful movie for the over sixty fives is know judged purely on whether or not they leave the cinema smiling? On leaving the cinema where I first saw The Deerhunter in 1978 I was in tears does this make it a bad film? Thankfully there are still filmmakers about, mainly from Britain and world cinema that can still make a descent imaginative, intelligent, challenging and creative movie.

This weeks Robert Burns Centre Theatre Film Club movie was The Raven (2012) and was hosted by one of the RBC’s young programmers James Pickering who wasted no time in getting through his introduction so the paying audience could get on with the film. An American thriller set in Boston in 1849, its a fictional account of the last days of Edgar Allan Poe’s life, in which the author, poet, editor and literary critic pursues a serial killer whose murders mirror those in Poe’s tales of mystery and the macabre particular The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Pit and the Pendulum both of which have been made into feature films. 

John Cusack plays Edgar Allan Poe.

Directed by James McTeigue an Australian whose directorial debut was V For Vendetta (2006), before this he was an assistant director on various feature films including Star Wars II (2002) and The Matrix Trilogy (1999-2003). The rather puzzling Edgar Allan Poe, whose actual death was probably shrouded in more mystery than that shown in the film, was played by John Cusack who seems to have lost his way since great films like Being John Malkovich (1999), The Thin Red Line (1998) Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) and the award winning The Grifters (1990). The English actress Alice Eve, who you may remember from Starter for 10 (2006), plays Poe’s love interest Emily Hamilton with her father portrayed by Brendan Gleeson whose best role amongst many is Sergeant Gerry Boyle in the excellent Irish black comedy The Guard (2011), now there’s a film that makes you leave the cinema with a broad grin. Welshman Luke Evans (Tamara Drew 2011, The Blitz 2011, The Three Musketeers 2011) plays the dynamic Inspector Emmett Fields.

The murders mirror Poes stories.

As my esteemed colleague remarked if you suspend your disbelief The Raven is a moderately entertaining gothic thriller with some great period detail and was generally enjoyed by the film club audience. There were one or two reservations the main one being that the villain was not signposted as the film evolved and was not revealed until the very end, something that did not spoil my enjoyment of the film as I felt that is was more a study of Poe’s psyche than a murder mystery. We all agreed that language was used to great effect by the main character, enriching the film. It was compared with the two recent Sherlock Holmes films, which in my opinion were not as good, full of stupid and unnecessary banter between Holmes and Watson. The only thing that spoilt this film was the completely out of place end credit that would have been more at home included in a Bourne or Bond film and not in a period drama.

Thought you may be interested in this press article that involves the country that last weeks movie was set in, people should read this before they see the film! Yemen on brink of food crisis.