non-review | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: Last Night in Soho

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Darren

Last Night in Soho is a fascinating snapshot of the siren lure of nostalgia, and how it is so often filtered through a presumptive male gaze.

Last Night in Soho follows a young student named Eloise who moves to London for the first time to follow her dream of becoming a fashion designer. After some tensions with her roommate, Eloise moves out of her apartment into a small bedsit, with warnings that past tenants have had some strange experiences in the flat – disappearing in the dead of night, as if fleeing from something that shares the space. Eloise has always been sensitive to otherworldly presences, and it is no surprise when she seems to connect with the memories imprinted in her new bedroom.

Who nose?

Night after night, Eloise is seduced by memories of a young woman named Sandy, who came to London to pursue her own ambitions of becoming a singer. Sandy met a handsome talent agent named Jack, who promises that he can make all of her dreams come true. As Eloise sinks deeper into this nostalgic fantasies of the swinging sixties, she notices that the lines are begin blur – between her waking moments and her sleeping thoughts, between herself and the girl who visits her at night, between dreams and nightmares.

At its core, Last Night in Soho is a meditation on the idea that it is not always so easy to escape the past.

Bad romance.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: anya taylor-joy, edgar wright, film, giallo, last night in soho, London, male gaze, matt smith, Movie, nightmare, non-review, nostalgia, review, sixties, slasher, thomasin mckenzie, violence | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Another Round

Posted on November 24, 2020 by Darren

Another Round marks another successful collaboration for director Thomas Vinterberg and actor Mads Mikkelsen.

Another Round is an exploration of alcoholism, filtered through the lens of midlife crisis. Prompted by a conversation over dinner, four teachers decide to embark on a pseudo-scientific study to test the hypothesis that the human body and mind function optimally with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.5%. This experiment naturally has a variety of unintended consequences for the middle aged men as they attempt to navigate the world of new possibilities that they create for themselves.

Drinking it all in…

Another Round works in large part because of the chemistry of its four leads: Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe and Magnus Millang. It helps that Vinterberg is also careful to avoid tipping Another Round into stern-faced moralising about the dangers of alcohol. Although the movie’s trajectory is quite obvious from the moment that the four men seize on their plans, Another Round is refreshingly honest about the nature of the four men’s relationship to alcohol. The film understands the pull of alcohol to men in that situation.

Still, Another Round suffers slightly from feeling overly familiar. Its plot and character arcs are straightforward, and the film occasionally tips into outright melodrama in its final act. Still, there’s a lot to recommend Another Round, even if the taste isn’t quite as exotic as it might suggest.

Relighting his fire.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: alcoholism, another round, carlsberg, denmark, film, Mads Mikkelsen, Movie, non-review, review, thomas vinterberger | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Lighthouse

Posted on December 2, 2019 by Darren

The Lighthouse is a striking, evocative, psychedelic horror. It is also about twenty minutes too long.

Director Robert Eggers made a striking impression with The Witch. Indeed, there’s a clear set of throughlines connecting The Lighthouse to The Witch. Both are fundamentally period pieces about characters who find themselves in extremely isolated conditions, with the unsettling implication that something vague and ominous is lurking in the darkness just beyond the candle light. Both are also highly formal pieces, with Eggers embracing a consciously heightened aesthetic to create a sense of unreality within his film.

Downward spiral.

However, The Lighthouse stands apart from The Witch in the particulars of its exploration of isolation. After all, The Witch was a story about a young woman who moved into the rural countryside with her entire nuclear family. In contrast, the experience in The Lighthouse is much more intense. It is the story of a young man who finds himself offered a (relatively) high-paying position on a remote rock to work as an assistant to a veteran lighthouse keeper. The two men are strangers when they start to work together, and may remain strangers throughout.

The Lighthouse becomes a study of the descent into madness, the collapse of civility, and the horrors of living with a terrible room mate.

Solid as a rock.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, Movie, non-review, review, robert eggers, the lighthouse | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Baby Driver

Posted on June 25, 2017 by Darren

Baby Driver is largely about keeping the wheels spinning.

Circular imagery recurs throughout the film. At various points, long-take sequences begin and end in the same location, following characters as they move in a literal circle. At other points, the camera remains static while characters leave the frame to one side and enter from the other, creating the impression that they have just lapped their environment. Baby Driver is populated with objects that go all the way around to end up where they started; the clicker on an iPod, the drum of a washing machine, the wheels on a car, the subwoofer on a stereo, the record on a turntable.

Tune in, and cop out.

Even the dialogue and story move in something approaching a circle; recurring patterns of bad behaviour and errors in judgement, repeated lines offering a sense of symmetry to the story. In one of the nicer smaller examples, both the extended opening and closing sequences make a point to place the eponymous getaway driver behind the wheel of a striking red Subaru. Calls and response, echoes and refrains, patterns and sequences. It all comes around, Baby Driver suggests.

There is very little novel or innovative in Baby Driver, which feels very much like an attempt by writer and director Edgar Wright to construct a more conventional crowd-pleasing film than cult hits that defined his earlier efforts. A lot of Baby Driver feels conventional and archetypal, a conscious choice on the part of the director. While the supporting cast features any number of interesting players breathing life into familiar criminal archetypes, Baby Driver suffers from the fact that its two leads are its least satisfying element.

Drive baby.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: baby driver, edgar wright, film, Movie, non-review, non-review review, review | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: David Lynch – The Art of Life

Posted on February 26, 2017 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Audi Dublin International Film Festival 2017.

David Lynch: The Art of Life is a fairly conventional and straightforward affair as these sorts of documentaries go.

The documentary eschews a lot of the trapping of more adventurous entries in the genre. Indeed, most of David Lynch: The Art of the Life could have been filmed and recorded in David Lynch’s art studio, as the director talks at length about his life and the camera pans loving across his working space and intercuts his monologues with art work that seems to hit on some of the core themes of his narration at any given moment. There is something very standard about the way that David Lynch: The Art of Life is put together.

Indeed, the film largely eschews any sense of outside context or material. The only voice heard over the course of the film is that of David Lynch himself, recording at his own home studio. Only rarely do the production team need to use material that doesn’t belong to Lynch to flesh out his dialogue, notably during his discussion of his time in Philadelphia. Those occasions are especially noticeable because the documentary takes great care to credit those sources, drawing attention to how much material comes from Lynch’s own archives and records.

However, there is a strong argument that Lynch is suited to this approach. Lynch is a surrealist artist, and it is very hard to argue that anybody has a stronger grip on or understanding of his work. Indeed, the most effective and striking aspect of David Lynch: The Art of Life is the way in which it allows Lynch to make his own arguments from his own perspective crafting a narrative that feels distinct and unique. For all that Lynch is a surrealist, David Lynch: The Art of Life allows him to make a strong case as the only sane man in an insane world.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: david lynch, david lynch: the art of life, film, Movie, non-review, review, the art of life | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Sully – Miracle on the Hudson

Posted on November 28, 2016 by Darren

Sully: Miracle on the Hudson has a certain Frank Capra quality to it.

To be fair, a lot of that comes from the casting of Tom Hanks in the title role. Hanks radiates a certain ineffable integrity, a “Hanksian Decency” that informs his performances in films as diverse as Bridge of Spies and Inferno. It is tempting to think of him as “America’s Dad”, particularly given the grey hair and the moustache that he donned for the title role here. However, it is also tempting to think of him as a latter-day Jimmy Stewart, the embodiment of a certain type of fundamental American decency that lends itself to this sort of narrative.

Hanks for the memories.

Similarly, director Clint Eastwood has a similar philosophy. Eastwood’s films tend to be organised around strong moral principles. Often those principles are articulated in terms of personal responsibility, particularly the responsibility that individuals have for others whether in a professional capacity (J. Edgar) or a personal capacity (Million Dollar Baby) or simply by virtue of being there (Gran Torino). Eastwood’s recurring fascination with individual responsibility makes him a quintessentially American director.

This combination is ideally suited to Sully, which is constructed as something akin to a modern-day American fairytale.

“Mr. Sullenberger goes to the NTSB Debriefing.”

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Clint Eastwood, film, Movie, non-review, review, sully, tom hanks, trump | 9 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Accountant

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Darren

If the default summer blockbuster is a “comic book” movie, then The Accountant is an “airport paperback” movie.

Although The Accountant is based upon an original idea by screenwriter Bill Dubuque, it feels very much like something adapted from some pulpy thriller. It has all the ingredients. Like so many John Gresham best sellers, it has a title comprised of a noun used as the definitive article. It has a pithy high concept that can be summarised in a nice tagline. It is packed full of ridiculous twists. It has a plot that is largely just something on which it can hang all manner of goofy ideas. It even has a fondness for absurd (and contrived) exposition delivered via monologue.

Unaccountable variables.

This is both the best and the worst thing about The Accountant. By just about any measure, The Accountant is a ridiculous film with a fairly thin concept and with a variety of twists that will seem inevitable to any genre-savvy observer. However, there is something quite enjoyable in watching The Accountant bounce between these crazy twists. The Accountant works best when it embraces its pulpier attributes, rolling with each crazy development after the last and never stopping to catch its breath.

The Accountant is a very weird and dysfunctional film, but that dysfunction becomes part of the charm. Much like those page-turners picked up to help pass long flights, it is unlikely that much of The Accountant will remain with audiences after the credits roll. However, there is still some fun to be had.

You can make a killing in this field.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: ben affleck, film, gavin o'connor, Movie, non-review, pulp, review, the accountant | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: A Long Way Down

Posted on February 16, 2014 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014.

A Long Way Down is never anywhere near as irreverent as it thinks it is. The story of four people who attempted suicide on “the most popular suicide spot on the most popular night for suicides” has a pretty effective basic premise. There’s a lot of material for a pitch black comedy here, particularly with Pierce Brosnan playing a former television presenter who has been convicted of having sex with a minor. (The BBC co-production credit makes this plot point feel particularly awkward.)

Instead, A Long Way Down pitches itself as a generic feel-good yearn about how people are nowhere near as cynical as they might initially claim to be. Ironically, this ends up making A Long Way Down feel particularly cynical.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: a long way down, film, Imogen Poots, jameson dublin international film festival, jdiff, nick hornby, non-review, pierce brosnan, review | 3 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Les Misérables

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Darren

It’s hard not to admire Les Misérables. It’s the first honest-to-goodness entirely sincere and mostly unironic big budget musical that we’ve seen released in quite some time. While song and dance will always be a part of the movies (The Muppets, for example, carrying many a dainty tune last year), there’s something quite impressive about seeing a music as epic and as iconic as Les Misérables carried across to the big screen. The stage musical became something of a cultural phenomenon on the West End, and Tom Hooper does an effective job of transitioning from stage to screen – even if he doesn’t consistently capitalise on the format shift.

There are some fundamental problems. The second half is a little too awkwardly paced and too disjointed to come together as well as it should, and Hooper seems to have a great deal pitching the right amount of camp (and humour) for an Oscar-bait musical about the aftermath of the French revolution. However, if you can look past those problems, the opening half is a superbly staged musical and the performances are impressive. Including the much maligned Russell Crowe, who might – hear me out – be the best thing about the film.

Sing when you’re winning… or at least nominated…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Amanda Seyfried, anne hathaway, art, film, helena bonham carter, Hooper, hugh jackman, jason segel, Jean Valjean, Les Misérables, Movie, Muppet, muppets, Musical theatre, non-review, paris, Performing Arts, review, russell crowe, sacha baron cohen, Samantha Barks, Tom Hooper | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: Rushmore

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Darren

I am quite fond of Rushmore. It’s strange, because I found that Anderson’s schtick wore off on many of his following films – The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited. I suspect my affection for the film is rooted in the fact that it was the first Wes Anderson film I ever saw, and so his quirks and style were refreshing to me. There is, after all, nobody who writes movie dialogue and directs scenes quite like Wes Anderson. In a way, he feels a bit like Quentin Tarantino, an autuer who seems to sign almost every frame of his work. I think, perhaps, that I am so partial to Rushmore because Anderson’s plot devices and his writing seem much better suited to it than to many of the films that followed. After all, it’s a lot easier to accept a film based around a character who acts like an emotionally immature teenager when that character is an emotionally immature teenager.