Dane DeHaan | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: Life (2015)

Posted on September 15, 2015 by Darren

The biggest problem with Life is that the film is largely lifeless.

Life is the story of the iconic photographs of James Dean taken by photographer Dennis Stock in the run-up to the release of East of Eden in March 1955. At that point, Dean was a young actor on the cusp of stardom. As the premiere of East of Eden approached, Dean still aspiring towards his definitive role in Rebel Without a Cause. Dennis Stock saw something in the young actor, believing he might capture a moment of cultural change in the brooding young actor.

“The coat, he borrowed from James Dean…”

Even if they didn’t make the cover of Life magazine, Stock’s photographs have come to define Dean in the popular memory. These photographs capture Dean at his most brooding and his most joyous, capturing the extremes of his experience. Snapping Dean walking through the rain in Times Square or reading comics with his brother, Dennis seemed to trap some of the essence of the actor in his work. Life centres on the complicated relationship that exists between the two men, as they attempt to get a read on one another and navigate the taut waters of celebrity.

However, for a film inspired by (and derived from) an instantly recognisable set of photos, there is something just a little bit too staid about Anton Corbijn‘s two-hour long character study. It feels like a loose selection of pop psychology strung around some faithful recreations, missing the vibrancy and the intimacy that made those shots so distinctive.

#HairRaising

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Dane DeHaan, film, James Dean, Life, Movie, non-review review, review, Robert Pattinson, robert pattison | 3 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Kill Your Darlings

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Darren

Kill Your Darlings feels like several different films all rolled into one. Is it an English major detective story about investigating one ruthless act through character and theme and other literary devices? Is it a coming of age story about a young man finding himself at college in New York City against the back drop of the Second World War? Is it a condemnation of the recklessness and the irreverence of the young Beat movement? Is it a standard college adventure story about young students sticking it to the man, and refusing to let authority figures tell them how to live their lives?

Kill Your Darlings is most interesting in the space between the familiar genre trappings, when it focuses on the characters at the dawn of the emerging literary movement. Indeed, the spirit of the film is best captured in one drug-induces segue in which our characters find themselves slipping between the reality and existing in a gap between moments. Kill Your Darlings is by turns romantic and cynical in its handling of Allen Ginsberg and his development as a young artist, featuring a wealth of superb central performances which can’t quite hold the film together.

Given the literary cut-up technique that we see the gang experiment with here, it feels strangely appropriate that Kill Your Darlings should be an uneven mess of a film, with a wealth of great ideas existing in the space between plot and tone and substance and reality. It just doesn’t make for a particularly satisfying film.

Talkin’ ’bout the Beat Generation…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Allen Ginsberg, Beat Generation, Columbia University, Dane DeHaan, daniel radcliffe, Ginsberg, Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, Jack Kerouac, Kill Your Darlings, Lucien Carr, Michael C Hall, New York City, William Burroughs | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Chronicle

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Darren

Chronicle is a fascinating deconstruction of the American superhero myth – the notion that “with great powers comes great responsibility”, as Stan Lee once wrote (albeit in a more convoluted fashion). Much like Fox’s other major release this week (Martha Marcy May Marlene), it represents an impressive theatrical debut from a young director who hopefully has a long and distinguished future ahead of him. While there are elements of Chronicle that do lack a bit of polish, it’s a compelling and engaging film, one that succeeds at picking apart some of the core assumptions of the superhero genre.