Zero Dark Thirty ★★★★★

A PICTURE TELLS A REMARKABLE STORY

 

 

Australia: 31st January 2013; USA 11thJanuary UK 25th January

Other Countries: Release Information

 

 

Zero Dark Thirty is the story behind ‘that’ news photo.  You know the one with Obama, his advisors, Vice President Biden and Hillary Clinton, sitting in a room staring at live feed of the Osama bin Laden capture mission.  Hillary’s hand covers her mouth in what looks like shock. 
           Their looks haunted me—what were they seeing?  Thanks to Oscar®-winning creative duo Director Kathryn Bigelow and producer and screenwriter Mark Boal we now know.  They were watching the culmination of a hell of a pursuit and capture mission spanning almost ten years; a mission that was mostly only successful thanks to a small team of CIA operatives.
 

 

The quest to tell the story of Zero Dark Thirty would eventually lead Bigelow and Boal into their own labyrinthine encounter with secretiveness and intense production challenges during their six years of sourcing and reporting the story for accuracy.

 

“This thing is pretty handmade,” says Boal, “and it’s gone through two iterations. It began six years ago as a movie about the failure to capture bin Laden in Tora Bora. I spent a few years on that, researching and writing, and we were in pre-production of that film by 2011, with scouts in Romania. Then, more or less out of the blue, bin Laden was killed, and that film became ancient history. So I had to start again.”

Along with the audience, the central character of the story, Maya (Jessica Chastain), is parachuted into the hunt for bin Laden with the unsettling experience of an “enhanced interrogation” session of an Al Qaeda detainee. Maya mirrors the audience’s mixed emotions on these interrogations. They are tough to watch. 

 

When it came to shooting these sequences, Bigelow took a leap far outside her comfort zone. “As a human being I wanted to cover my eyes, but as a filmmaker, I felt a responsibility to document and bear witness,” she says. “I felt I had to overcome my discomfort for the sake of telling the story.”

Maya begins to believe that one man, Abu Ahmed, a shadowy figure mentioned by many of the interrogated captives, is the key to bin Ladin’s location.  However, after so many false leads over the years, Maya is the only person who still firmly believes in her theory. 

The story follows a small group of agents through the years and peeks behind the terrorist news headlines as al-Qaeda strikes at the US and even the team attempting to track him. It is a dangerous and dirty game.  The last quarter of the film is a unique visceral experience; taut and horrific in its authenticity, as the SEAL team breaches the bin Laden compound accomplishing the historic conclusion.
 

The film has garnered great controversy and criticism over its torture scenes but Boal responds. “Putting it mildly, this is an extremely controversial subject.  I wanted to try to capture the complexity of the situation, morally and psychologically. It’s not an aesthetic goal of the film to settle scores, or end the debate about torture’s efficacy. But it was part of the story and we needed to include it.  The goal was to portray the events vividly and to make them real for the audience.”

“On the other hand,” he says, “towards the end of the film, we see that, ultimately, bin Laden’s compound was found not through any of these techniques, but through a combination of bribery, traditional spy work and electronic surveillance.

In case you’re wondering, Zero Dark Thirty is military jargon for the dark of night, as well as the moment—12:30 a.m.—when the Navy SEALs first stepped foot on the Osama compound.  It's a moment captured in 'that' photo that will leave history to dictate the true ramifications.  And it sure makes a remarkable movie.

Read More

The Impossible ★★★½

A WAVE OF EMOTION

Australia: 24th January 2013; USA 4th January UK 1st January 2013
Other Countries: Release Dates

Hug your loved ones. That’s what you think whilst watching THE IMPOSSIBLE. The intimacy of film allows us to enter a true-life experience we normally can only watch on the news; though it isn’t hard to imagine the terror of those poor souls who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time in the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami.  It left staggering figures in its wake, 1.69 million displaced and 230,000 estimated dead.

So with great trepidation we came to view THE IMPOSSIBLE. You watch knowing what is to come, as we've seen it replayed countless times on our televisions. We’ve even seen Oprah interview survivors. This news story as implausible as you will think it is, as it unfolds in THE IMPOSSIBLE, is very true. Even the filmmakers don’t think you will believe it, so they repeat, ‘This is a true story’ twice at the beginning.

It is the story of an English family’s experience (the real family was Spanish) in the 2004 Tsunami whilst holidaying in Phuket. The family of five, Maria (Naomi Watts), Henry (Ewan McGregor) and children, Lucas (Tom Holland), Thomas (Samuel Joslin) and Simon Oaklee Pendergast), are staying at a luxury resort and relaxing by the pool when the Tsunami hits.

Lucas and his Mother surface and, within half an hour, find each other amidst the turbulent flow of the surge but they have been separated from Henry and the other children. They believe them dead. Maria has been badly injured and the story follows her and Lucas as they make their way through the disaster's aftermath and end up at a local hospital. The film switches to Henry’s relentless search for his wife and son. Along the way, we experience close up the devastation of the tragedy (although much has been made of the fact that the film is peculiarly absent of Thai victims).
 

 

Whilst the movie has a few plotting issues and occasionally becomes a little too preoccupied with assuring us how deserving this family was of salvation, it is still a film that does a good job of reminding us of the randomness of tragedy and good fortune; and, of course, how often you must hug your loved ones.

 

Read More

Bernie ★ ★ ★ ½

Did You Hear the One about the Aunt in a Freezer?


Release Dates

Australia: 16th August, 2012 USA DVD Release 21st August, 2012
Other Countries: Release Dates

The title of the April 2012 article in the New York Timessays it all, “How My Aunt Marge Ended Up in the Deep Freeze . . .”   The article written by Joe Rhodes, the nephew of Marjorie Nugent, (the frozen Aunt), recounts the true-life story of much loved Bernie Tiede, assistant funeral director, and affluent and mean spirited Marjorie in the tiny town of Carthage Texas. 

If you weren’t told it was true, you wouldn’t believe it.  And even as the end credits of the mockumentary film “Bernie” roll, you sit there still mesmerised by the attitudes of the townsfolk, who just can’t believe that in 1996 their beloved Bernie turned murderer.  Even if he was a killer, the consensus of the townsfolk is he should be given a medal not life.

Directed by Richard Linklater, the film chronicles, in documentary style, Carthage’s Bernie (Jack Black) befriending Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine), whom Linklater labours to assure us is one of the nastiest human beings you would ever meet.  A friendship develops between the 39-year-old Bernie and the 81-year-old millionaire Marjorie and they spend the next few years travelling the world and living the high life on her dime.  Eventually, she even writes him into her will and signs over her power of attorney.

Marjorie, who had blossomed during the friendship, increasingly turns more possessive and demanding with Bernie, until one day he snaps, shooting her and disposing of her body in a freezer under the frozen vegetables and pot pies.   For the next nine months he then continues as normal with his life, creating ever-changing excuses as to her unavailability, whilst ploughing through two million dollars of her money.

So popular is Bernie, that Danny Buck Davidson, (Matthew McConaughey), the district attorney, faces an uphill battle to convict if the trial is held in Carthage, uttering one of the classic film lines during the trial, “Oh, he’s an angel, all right. An angel of death!”

The film whilst not all out hilarious certainly will leave you guiltily chuckling at the off-beat attitudes of the town’s residents. Wait through the credits for some of the best lines as townsfolk have their final say on Bernie’s crime and Marjorie receiving her just deserts.

Says nephew Joe Rhodes, ‘I think my visit to the “Bernie” set may have been more unsettling to some of the cast and crew than it was to me. As Skip Hollandsworth, who co-wrote the screenplay, introduced me around, a few people clearly weren’t sure how to react. Should they apologize for making a comedy about my aunt’s murder? Should they say they were sorry for my loss? I told them not to worry about it. “Bernie’s not the first one who thought about killing her,” I told them. “He’s just the first one who went through with it.”

Like all black comedies, the comedy in Bernie is that this is something about which you should not be laughing.  But when you have real-life characters sprouting lines such as "There are people in town, honey, that woulda shot her for five dollars," you know you have permission to laugh at this tabloid story. And if you don’t read tabloid, go anyway just to watch the three leads bring their ‘A’ game to this display of humanity at its most bizarre.

Read More

The Iron Lady ★★★

How they turned gold into tin

Imagine, if you will, after watching The Iron Lady, the biopic of Margaret Thatcher’s life, Margaret is asked her opinion on said film and its portrayal of what is her memorable and significant life story.  Mrs Thatcher eyes the interviewer, and with a stare that would stop a politician at fifty paces, she replies, ‘I don’t like the tone of it.’  Be assured, there will be a lot of reviewers and film-goers backing her on that one.

As this movie releases in late December, the first thing you will hear is that Meryl Streep is a shoe-in to win the Oscar.  And, I would say she should win the Oscar, not just for her performance but in that she manages, to elevate a very average movie to watchable and entertaining.  She is startlingly brilliant in this role and it is a pleasure to watch her personify a woman so recognisable from our recent history.  Only once did I catch a Meryl gesture; the rest was pure Margaret.

The Iron Lady is the story of Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep), probably one of the most famous and controversial political leaders of our time.  She was England’s first female Prime Minister, serving from 1979 until 1990.  An ambitious and influential leader, she was loved and hated during office.  Having lived in London in the early eighties, I can attest to the criticism and strong emotion her “Thatcherite” policies evoked, whilst she transformed England from a country in recession to a prosperous economy again.  Her hard line stance on unions, her decisions to go to war in the Falklands, and her overseeing of the introduction of the divisive Poll Tax are all touched upon in the movie. These tough political decisions of her Prime Ministership are intermingled with the personal moments she shared with her Father, her children and her husband, Denis (played with comical charm by Jim Broadbent).

The Thatcher story is a fascinating one on many levels, from her early childhood as the daughter of a green grocer in a politically minded family, to her determined struggle against the political ‘Boy’s Club’, to the family she neglected in order to realise her goals.  The peek through the window into the eleven years of her Prime Ministership, where she literally had a hand in changing the world, leaves us in admiration of her stoicism. 

In all that huge life though, lays the first problem with the movie.  There is a lot of story to tell, in one hundred and five minutes.  Abi Morgan, penned the screenplay, and worked closely with Director, Phyllida Lloyd.  My sense of it is that they took off on the wrong path from the very beginning. 

First, in wanting to cover everything they have created a film that felt, annoyingly, like we were jumping around in a time machine and a broken one at that—Doctor Who, we need your sonic screwdriver.  We are hurled back and forth through five minute snapshots of key life events.  Then, just as things get interesting, we are whisked back to present day with old pensioner Margaret Thatcher, who suffers dementia and converses with her long dead husband, Denis.

Another issue and, the ruination of the story for me, was the choice to frame the story around Margaret Thatcher’s senile character, struggling to clear her long-dead husband’s clothes from the house. This Margaret’s behaviour raises character flaws which don’t ring true.  In one scene, we have old Margaret giving her Doctor a run for his money, fitting perfectly with the strong, younger Margaret character.  In the next, we have Margaret dithering over her husband’s clothes or over concerned about the price of milk.  You could argue that this was the dementia influence but I would say anyone who faced the world fearlessly would also face her own health issues the same way.

Then, after the film has delivered us ninety minutes of a woman who will not be stopped, who knows her own mind, who will go to war for her principles, she then utters one of the weakest lines a female character can, as her husband’s ghost walks out the door.  She cries out, ‘Denis come back’.

After I saw this film, I felt a margin of anger towards its makers, in that they chose to tell the story using a senile Margaret’s reflections.  I kept thinking why Aaron Sorkin (Acadamy Award Screenplay writer of Social Network) couldn’t have penned this one.

As Margaret Thatcher once said, ‘What Britain needs is an iron lady.’  What this inspirational story needed, with its talented leads, strong supporting actors, and remarkable makeup artists, was an iron strong script.    What they gave us was hollow tin.

Release Dates:  Australia December 26,   USA December 30,   UK January 6.    Other Countries 

Read More