Film Review: The Monuments Men

The Monuments Men. Rated M (violence). 118 minutes. Directed by George Clooney. Screenplay by George Clooney and Grant Heslov. Based on the book by Robert M. Edsel.

Verdict: Self-indulgence on a monumental scale.

Based on the real-life exploits of the officers and civilians who made up the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (established to locate and return the millions of valuable artworks and artefacts that had been stolen by the Nazis), Clooney and Heslov’s screenplay barely skims the surface of what must have been at stake for these people during dangerous and difficult times.

Despite James Bissell’s (ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Good Night, and Good Luck) meticulous production design (or perhaps because of it), The Monuments Men resembles an over-produced episode of Hogan’s Heroes, as Clooney and Matt Damon, with support from John Goodman, Bill Murray and The Artist’s Jean Dujardin, stroll through the action, barely managing to alter their facial expressions or register a single degree of difficulty.

The result is also often quite funny, as though Clooney and Co have chosen to play it mostly for laughs, which is not only incredibly disconcerting given the subject matter, but also somewhat disrespectful to the honour and the memory of the men and women whose stories they borrow.

Even if Clooney and Heslov do not appear to have been terribly concerned about the fact that there were also women involved in the program, the film boasts a fine performance from Cate Blanchett as French art curator Claire Simone, a witness to the massive art theft the group are charged with retrieving.

Hugh Bonneville (Downtown Abbey) is also excellent as Donald Jeffries, whose passion and dedication to protect Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges from the thieving Nazis, provides the film with its only moments of genuine and deeply-moving drama. And yes, the elderly man in the final scene is George Clooney’s Dad. How nice.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Gravity

Gravity. Rated M (survival themes, disturbing images and coarse language). 91 minutes. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón. Screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón.

Verdict: A majestic, actor-proof cinematic tour de force.

There is no denying the visual majesty of this extraordinary cinematic achievement that, if nothing else, will restore your faith in the scope, scale and potential of cinema as an artform. Unlike so many theatrical releases so far this year, waiting for Gravity to come out on DVD would be pointless – such is its magnificent visual and aural impact on the big screen. In 3D it is, quite simply, astonishing, and the most complete and effective use of the technology since Avatar.

As space shuttle astronauts Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and Shariff (voiced by Paul Sharma) are undertaking a space walk to service the Hubble Space Telescope, Mission Control in Houston (voiced by Ed Harris) warns them that debris from a destroyed Russian satellite is heading their way.

Stone (who is on her first mission) hesitates to follow the veteran Kowalski’s orders to return to the shuttle immediately, and the high-speed debris slams into them, causing them to become untethered from not only each other, but also any form of structure. With her supply of oxygen running low, Stone must somehow make it to the relative safety of the International Space Station, and from there, Earth.

Alfonso Cuarón (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Children of Men) and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (The Tree of Life, Children of Men) deliver one visually ravishing scene after another to the screen with rare cinematic grandeur, to the point where it becomes easy to ignore Cuarón’s script (co-written with his son Jonás), which clunks along mindlessly.

Sandra Bullock makes the most out of the deep-space drama she has to work with, while the goofy Clooney mis-reads his role entirely. Thankfully, you don’t go to Gravity for the acting. You go to see and hear how stunning cinema can be when the artists behind the camera dare to dream big and loud.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: The Descendants

The Descendants. Rated M (mature themes and coarse language). 115 minutes. Directed by Alexander Payne. Screenplay by Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash. Based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings.

One of the many complications that attend an actor’s celebrity status (in this case, George Clooney), is that the relentless torrents of salacious gossip and innuendo about their private lives can often overwhelm – or at the very least distract from – the work they attempt for the sake of their craft.

And so it is with the powerful, intricate and involving contemporary family drama in which Mr Clooney’s Matt King is struggling with a considerable number of responsibilities; his two recalcitrant young daughters (Alexandra and Scottie), his being named the sole trustee of his ancestor’s spectacular, pristine beachfront land, and the fact that his wife Elizabeth lies in a coma (the result of a boating accident) from which she unlikely to recover.

It is rich dramatic fodder, and Mr Payne (Sideways) expertly guides his outstanding ensemble through the emotionally-charged and conflicted minefield. Shailene Woodley acts everyone else off the screen as the eldest daughter Alexandra – managing to deliver a perfectly pitched performance as a girl on the cusp of adulthood who is beginning to accept her share of responsibility for whatever the future may hold. Amara Miller makes a superb debut as the youngest daughter Scottie – delivering her engaging young character’s vulnerability, fear and individuality with rare insight and precision.

Mary Birdsong and Rob Huebel provide brief, but expert, support as Matt and Elizabeth’s conflicted friends Kai and Mark – with the scene in which Matt confronts them in their home about Elizabeth’s apparent infidelity, the dramatic highpoint.

The fine threads of black comedy are a welcome relief from all the bleak, intense and introspective drama, but it is ultimately Patricia Hastie’s haunting and wordless performance as the comatose Elizabeth that serves to remind us that we are all equally responsible for the messes we risk leaving behind.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.

Film review: Up in the air

Up in the air. 109 minutes. Rated M. Directed by Jason Reitman; Written by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner; Based on a novel by Walter Kim.

Depending entirely on how secure your own job is and how devoted you are to the charismatic charms of one Mr George Clooney, there is every possible chance you'll chuckle along with one or two engaging, albeit fleeting, moments throughout this lithe, mercilessly fatuous, one-note romantic comedy. What is more likely, however, is that by the time you wake up in the morning, you'll have forgotten you even saw it. If ever there was a film that fails to translate its insular, celebrity-inspired Hollywood take on the meaning of family and relevance of employment and job satisfaction to our way of life – this is it.

Inexplicably nominated for three of this year's Academy Awards® (including Best Picture) and the winner of last month's Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay, Up in the air is one of those well-made, precise Hollywood flicks that bathes in the excesses of its own conceit and leaves you, well, up in the air about what to make of it all.

Ryan Bingham (our effervescent Mr Clooney) is employed to fly around the United States of America telling people they no longer have a job. When super-sacker Natalie Keener (a straight-jacketed Anna Kendrick) joins the team to implement an online (webcam-based) version of this process, Mr Bingham's penchant for frequent flyer points (and his prized membership of any number of other loyalty programs) is severely compromised.

Up in the Air's cursory nod to the full extent of the underlying drama of what is at stake here is approached with a startling nonchalance, but no more than you might expect from a script that determinedly denies any dramatic context. It chooses, instead, to remain dedicated to its very-pleased-with-ourselves polish and intellectual bankruptcy. The lowpoint (from which the film fails to recover) comes when one of the poor souls who threatens to commit suicide if she's sacked, actually does. The inconvenience of this whole unfortunate episode is glossed over in barely a minute or two of screen time. Now, while that plot-point obviously fails to mean something to the filmmakers, it's an astonishing error of judgment on their part to think it will mean nothing to us – despite how cleverly 'romantic' and 'comedic' they think they're being.

Mr Reitman (the far more entertaining Thank you for smoking and Juno) delivers a polished product that fails, at every turn, to speak to us on any meaningful level. The script takes a cautious and incredibly self-concsious side-step into oh-so-familiar family drama territory, but sensing that it's all becoming a bit risky and meaningful, departs again – without revealing to us anything we haven't already seen before countless times, and to much greater (and memorable) effect.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspapers Group and was published in the print edition of the Geraldton Guardian.