FLIGHT: Just like a Hangover

Flight is like a big weekend. It begins with the expectation and excitement. Denzel awakens in a ruined hotel room next to a completely naked woman with an amazing body. He snorts a line and, camera tilt, the music starts and Denzel walks down the corridor in his cool Pilot outfit (see picture). You think ‘Wow this is going to be really fun!’.

And then comes the flight scene. It’s just what you expected but better. It’s over the top, it’s so full of suspense you want to close your eyes but you can’t! It’s campy but still so effective. You never want to get on a plane again. And then BAM suddenly it’s over. A little bit bloodier than you thought and you wish that the sexy flight attendant from the beginning didn’t have to die, but still – it was great.

Denzel is knocked out and suddenly it all changes pace. It’s like a Sunday morning. You wake up bleary eyed, looking around wondering what has happened. Wait, what? This is a story about one man’s battle with addiction? Oh. The rest of the film is just like a hangover: painful, slow and slightly sickening. I don’t mind addiction stories, but when it’s got such a strong dose of morality mixed in, it makes me want to puke.

Of course, by the end of it all you are just left wondering ‘Why did I do this to myself?’

COMPLIANCE: A Flawed Masterpiece

‘There was the sense of trying to get something that would be believable, or maybe not even believable but acceptable, to audiences as sounding like it had some logic to it.’ Director,  Craig Zobel, in an interview with the AV club.

Compliance is truly an amazing film. Made with only fifty grand and shot almost entirely in one location, the film stands as one of the most gripping I have seen in a long time. The film is based off true events: a man called a series of 70 McDonald’s Restaurants in the United States over a period of ten years, posing as a police officer. He would tell a manager that one of the employees had stolen money from a costumer and ask them to confine and strip-search the employee. The caller would continue, seeing how far he could get the manager to go in the name of following orders. In the instance depicted in the film, they went very far. The viewing experience is pretty harrowing, causing many walk outs and heated debates on the film festival circuit.

As I said earlier, this truly is an amazing film. Since I saw it I have been unable to stop talking about it to anyone who would listen. It’s so close to being absolutely sensational except for a few pitfalls in the last quarter that are so dissapointing.

The suspense of the film is held in the conversations. The audience knows something the victims do not, so watching the poor manager cry as she forces the employee to strip is devastating. But in the last quarter the narrative goes so far off course, that the audience is left thinking that that section is fictional. In fact, it isn’t.The events that take place are so shocking that it would be a hard job to make them not necessary believable but ‘acceptable’ to use Zobel’s words. Watching the film it feels as though not even the director thaught it was plausable that those events took place. But they did. And if a little more ‘logic’ was injected into those climactic scenes, this truly could have been a masterpiece.

SLEEPWALK WITH ME: Birbiglia’s Big Dreams

We all have dreams. Matt Pandimiglio has big ones. All he wants to be is a comedian. So he works in a comedy bar and fills in doing stand up when other comedians drop out at the last minute. Also he has big dreams. As in running out of a 3rd story window in your sleep kind of dreams.

I was very keen to see this film after hearing it was a true story about a man with REM behaviour disorder. When I was twelve I watched a doco on SBS about people that commit murder in their sleep (that stopped sleepovers for a few good years let me tell you). Sleepwalk With Me wasn’t quite what I expected. Mike Birbiglia stars, directed and wrote the film that follows a hectic few months of life where his career was made, and his longterm relationship ended. As his life becomes more and more split, he dreams become more and more hectic. And he starts acting them out.

This film was pretty enjoyable. It became too much of a romantic comedy in parts which was a shame. There was one part I really liked about it though. About a quarter of the way in Matt realises he’s not really a very good comedian at all. He is under the impression that just because it is his dream, because he has wanted it so very much, for so very long somehow he must be good at it. That just wanting it is enough. Matt  realises all of a sudden that he is actually going to have to try hard, get better, and take some risks in order to achieve his awake dreams. And also tie himself down so he doesn’t act out his sleeping ones.

The Silver Linings Playbook: My Oscar Pick

So the Oscars are coming up and it is my favorite award show of the year. It was the Golden Globes, for the 3 years that Ricky Gervais hosted by now it’s back to being the Oscars. The Silver Linings Playbook is my favorite film among all the Oscar Nominees and I hope it wins all 8 of the awards it has been nominated for. I’m not stupid enough to think it will so in particular, I hope it wins best adapted screenplay for David O’Russell and best actress for Jennifer Lawrence.

Based on a novel by Matthew Quick and adapted and directed by David O Russell,  The Silver Linings Playbook tells the story of Patrick (Bradley Cooper), a man who has just been released from a mental hospital after a traumatic episode nine months earlier. Diagnosed with bipolar at 37, Pat is placed in hospital by order of the courts. His mother played by Jackie Weaver has come to pick him up against the hospitals wishes but Pat has served his time and now he is determined to put his life back together again.  He is in a hyper state of affirmation and is not taking his medication but he has one major goal, to get his wife back.

His time at home is fraught with problems, particularly with his father(Robert De Niro) who loves him dearly but is suffering from border line OCD. Pat can see the illness in his father more clearly now and doesn’t want to participate in his superstitions. It is into this melting pot of dysfunction that Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) enters . Tiffany meets Pat in a strange sort of setup and it is obvious that they are kindred spirits. Tiffany is suffering from her own issues. Her husband has recently died and she is a recovering sex addict among other things. Pat and Tiffany are both just as socially inappropriate and frank as each other and are strangely a good fit, but Pat will have none of it since he wants to get back with is wife. So they become friends and Tiffany offers to help him contact his wife, a prize for which she requires a reward, his help in a ballroom dancing competition. And so the romantic comedy premise is made.

The thing about this film that makes it so special is it’s authenticity. The realness of the characters and their relationships makes this film, a total anathema to the sugary style of average rom coms like some of Cooper’s earlier films e.g. Valentines Day. The accuracy and humor brought to the different characters mental afflictions is staggering and the performances don’t disappoint. Bradley Cooper shows an acting ability here, that I wasn’t sure he had. His mile a minute speak, his mental and physical struggle and his blossoming love all feel natural and empathetic. He hits it out of the park.

Jennifer Lawrence is even better. She is so real in this character that I actually thought it was her. The story is told from Pat’s perspective but she has you on her side in every scene. You want him to be with her because you’re in love with her. She yells, screams, she’s unstable, she calls Pat of his crap and she is doing everything she can to change her patterns and because she sees the potential in Pat so do we. She deserves an Academy Award at 22 and I will fight any one who says different.

This film is beautifully written, it sees the comedy in the absurd and tragic. It examines the crazy in all of us and never talks down. It talks to an audience about real life with mental illness. Never turning the story into horror film or a grueling drama which is where most audiences have previously encountered this subject matter.

This film loves it characters, Jacki Weaver and Robert De Niro are vivid and engaging as Pat’s parents who are trying to navigate a situation they don’t fully understand. They love their son and will do anything for him even if they never get it right. Chris Tucker is also hilarious as Pat’s friend who keeps trying to escape the hospital.

I can’t stop thinking about this film and I am so jealous of everyone that got to be a part of it. See it now, you’ll thank me.