Review: Dead Man Down (2013)

* *
Director: Niels Arden Oplev
Starring: Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace, Terrence Howard, Dominic Cooper

Dead Man Down begins with an intriguing premise and then proceeds to bury it under layers and layers of plot until you can no longer see it. It has two capable actors in its central roles, who sometimes spark separately and apart, but whose performances are ultimately suffocated by the burdens of the narrative. There's a good movie in here somewhere, somewhere deep, deep down where there is one good plot, instead of several lesser ones struggling to come together. As it is, Dead Man Down is a generic, somewhat forgettable thriller.

Canadian Film Review: Cole (2009)

* * 1/2
Director: Carl Bessai
Starring: Richard de Klerk, Kandyse McClure, Sonja Bennett

You probably know the story. He's the soulful gem of a rough small town, whose artistic aspirations could be smothered by the demands of the family that keeps him tethered in place. He makes a slight, but definite break, and meets a girl who speaks to the artist in him, but comes from another world, one in which he's made to feel uncouth and unwelcome. Worlds collide and something has to give: he can't have the girl, the realization of his artistic ambition, and the family he holds so dear. Cole can't be said to tell a groundbreaking story, but when it is at its sharpest and most focused, it tells a standard story very well.

Review: 25th Hour

* * * *
Director: Spike Lee
Starring: Edward Norton

For 24 hours Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) will walk around his city, spend time with his friends, with his father, and with the woman he loves, have one last party, and settle an outstanding score. On the 25th hour, he'll turn himself over to begin a seven year sentence for drug dealing. Spike Lee's "day in the life" film, based on the novel of the same name, is a great character drama, but it's also a beautifully elegiac ode to a city which, at the time of the film's production, was still freshly scarred. Eleven years on, 25th Hour remains a vital and moving film, and one of Lee's absolute best.

Hollywood Book Club: The Prince, the Showgirl and Me

Colin Clark's account of his time spent on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl is probably best known as one of the two books on which the Michelle Williams starring (and Oscar nominated) My Week with Marilyn is based. It's a set diary kept by Clark as he worked on the film, detailing some of the minor adventures of filmmaking and the minor and major dramas that play out during the course of getting a production off the ground. Interestingly, what isn't covered in the diary is what's covered in the other book that inspired the film, Clark's "My Week with Marilyn," written 40 years after the fact and detailing nine days during which he conveniently didn't keep a diary and allegedly had a (platonic) romance with Marilyn Monroe - because, if you were a 24 year old, heterosexual guy in 1956 who got to have any kind of intimacy with Marilyn Monroe, of course you'd wait 40 years to tell anyone about it.

21st Century Essentials: L'Enfant (2005)

All eras have works of art that are fundamental to our understanding of not only the craft itself, but the culture from which it was created. The 21st century is still nascent, but it isn't too early to start creating a canon that demonstrates the heights to which film as an artform has reached since the year 2000. These are the essential films:



Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne
Starring: Jeremie Renier
Country: Belgium

The driving narrative force of the Dardenne brothers' L’Enfant can be summed up in four words uttered by its protagonist, Bruno (Jeremie Renier): “What did I do?” That he doesn’t know the answer to that question would seem ridiculous were it not for the film’s carefully constructed portrait of innocence in the absence of any kind of morality. Bruno is at once the hero and the villain of this story, a character who does something unfathomably cruel and selfish, but who genuinely has no idea that what he’s done is cruel and selfish. With its direct, simple storytelling and the compelling performance at its centre, L’Enfant is an absolutely enthralling film.