Review: Steve Jobs (2015)

* * *
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogan, Jeff Daniels

As written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle, Steve Jobs is not your typical "important man" biopic. It's a biopic that unfolds in three distinct acts, each one focusing on the minutes leading up to a particular product launch, concerned less with pure historical accuracy and revealing the "real" Steve Jobs than it is with exploring the idea of Steve Jobs, pivoting around two key ideas about the man - his struggle over the fact of being adopted and his struggle to accept his role as a father to his eldest child - connected by his need for control. It isn't an especially subtle movie (if you miss the point the first time, the screenplay will circle back to it once or twice later), but it's a vibrant one and totally engrossing from beginning to end. It also adds yet another entry in Michael Fassbender's quickly growing gallery of fantastic performances.

Review: Trance (2013)

* * *
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson, Vincent Cassel

Take a pen and a piece of paper to Danny Boyle’s latest film, Trance, because when it’s over you’re going to want to try to sort out its tangled web of plot twists. I can’t promise that that will actually help, and I’m actually pretty certain that if you sort out all the threads you’ll discover that Rosario Dawson’s character is a little bit of an idiot, and if you hold one plot twist up to scrutiny you may discover that it exists solely for the purpose of a full-frontal nude scene by Dawson, but you may at least start to feel like the narrative ground has solidified beneath your feet. That all might sound like criticism, but it’s actually not. While I think that Trance probably falls apart if you think about it too much, it’s an exhilarating ride while you’re watching it.

The Best Picture Countdown #81: Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Note: this post is modified from a previously published post

Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto

Slumdog Millionaire begins with scenes of torture, traces a life full of poverty and brutality, and arrives at an ending that is incredibly uplifting. That is the magic of the film that launched Danny Boyle into the mainstream and brought home a boatload of Oscars. It is a film that finds just the right mix of darkness and light, horror and triumph. It is a Dickensian tale of rags to riches, of a young man who succeeds against all odds at becoming “the hero of [his] own life.”

The story is split up into two threads which will eventually merge. In the present day Jamal (Dev Patel) is a contestant on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and subjected to viciousious questioning by the police on suspicion that he’s cheated his way to the million dollar question. As they go through the questions he’s been asked, he explains how he knew the answers, relating the story of his life in the process. This method of storytelling isn’t particularly groundbreaking but Boyle breathes life into it, running many of the flashback scenes at a frenetic pace and a sometimes startling intensity. The present day scenes act not only to break up the story into digestible pieces, but also offer the opportunity to catch your breath.

Jamal has had a hard life. Orphaned at a young age, he and his brother, Salim, live a vagabond lifestyle, having various adventures as they try to survive and make a place for themselves in the world. Latika (played as an adult by Freida Pinto), a fellow orphan, becomes a point of contention between the brothers and the driving force in Jamal’s life. She proves elusive to Jamal, always, somehow, slipping through his fingers. The older they grow, the further away from him Latika seems to drift and Boyle consistently films her to emphasize that distance and the mirage-like facet of her being, showing her reflected in mirrors, through glass which distorts her image – she’s more dream than reality for Jamal.

Though the fairytale romance – with Jamal cast as the pauper turned prince and Latika as the captive princess – is the thematic element that gives shape to the narrative, underneath the romantic sheen is the harsher reality. The film never looks away from the poverty which surrounds Jamal and the very ordinariness of children playing (and living) in heaps of garbage makes it all the more jarring. As Jamal grows and Bombay becomes Mumbai and globalization takes hold, transforming the skyline with big, modern buildings, the poverty remains. When Jamal and Salim meet again as adults at the top of a building under construction, Salim points to an area of the city below them and states that their slum used to be there. It’s a business district now, a sign of progress sweeping through the city – but with all this progress the people at the lowest echelons of society haven’t been raised out of poverty, they’ve just been moved further to the fringes. Things are just as bad as they’ve ever been; you just have to look for it in a different place now.

This movie reminds me somewhat of Fernando Meirelles’ brilliant City of God - though Slumdog is about ten times less depressing, perhaps because its ending is less realistic. The optimism of the film’s conclusion works, though, because rather than deriving from material gains (Jamal never seems like he cares much about the money), it stems from the connection between one human being and another, which has no monetary value and which I think everyone can relate to on some level. It’s a fantastical story, but also very human and that’s what makes it so powerful.

Review: 127 Hours (2010)

* * * *
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: James Franco

Yeesh, that was rough. Full disclosure: I averted my eyes during the scene. I'm sure there are plenty of people braver than I, but I just couldn't look. 127 Hours is more than just that one scene, however, and director Danny Boyle and star James Franco deserve all the praise that I'm sure they'll get as the year-end awards start being handed out.

Franco stars as Aron Ralston, a hiker who famously had to amputate his own arm after being trapped in a Utah canyon in 2003. His trip starts well enough, as the film opens with him rushing out of the city - filling up a bottle of water but having been unable to find his swiss army knife - to get to Blue John Canyon and then spending most of his first day with a couple of other hikers (Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn). Shortly after parting ways with them and returning to the solitary adventuring that he so clearly loves, Aron's ordeal begins. Trapped, injured, and all alone in the middle of nowhere, his situation seems totally hopeless.

Ralston spends five days in the canyon making various attempts to extricate himself and spending a lot of time reflecting on how he has come to this point. No one knows where he is because he's been unable to share his life - even the minute details - with anyone else. He comes to regret this, both because it makes his situation more dire, and because he comes to realize all the things he's already missed and all the things he may miss out on in the future if he doesn't get out of the canyon. His experience ultimately transforms him both physically and spiritually, inspiring him to connect on a deeper level with those around him.

The story of man against nature is as old as storytelling itself but it rarely fails to be compelling. I think that's partly because its ultimate message - that human beings need one another - is something that the audience has already partly acknowledged before the story even gets started. Storytelling is an inherently communal activity as it requires both a teller and an audience, so stories like this one, which actively reaffirms the bonds that hold society together, are easily accessible. It also helps that, as played by Franco, Ralston is such an engaging character. For most of the film it's just him - Franco playing off of himself - and that's not something that every actor could make work, but he does it in spades. He displays a lot of different facets to the character and manages to make it clear that even though he's done a stupid thing, he's not a stupid person. It's an absolutely phenomenal performance.

Franco's performance goes a long way towards making sure that Ralston is a very active character despite his predicament, but credit is also due to Boyle. He approaches the insular nature of the story as a challenge rather than a limitation and succeeds at giving it an incredible sense of movement and energy. I think this might actually be my favourite of his films - hopefully next time I watch it I'll be able to watch all of it.

What Others Are Saying:
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Review: 28 Days Later (2002)

* * * 1/2
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson

Zombies! Society's breakdown! Badass chicks! Chaos, confusion and... hope. In the end, yes, there is hope, not to mention a great sense of mythology. 28 Days Later is a film with a lot going for it, which is perhaps why it's inspired sequels in the form of one film (28 Weeks Later; a second sequel called 28 Months Later has been in the planning stages for a while but is held up by disputes between the people with rights to the story) and two graphic novels.

28 Days Later has one of the best opening sequences I've ever seen. After a brief prologue in which animal activists attempt to rescue chimps being used for medical research - research which has resulted in them being infected with a contagious disease called "Rage" - the film flashes forward 28 days when Jim (Cillian Murphy), a bike courier who has been in a coma, awakes. The hospital is deserted and the streets of London are much the same. It makes for a chilling picture as Jim walks through the discarded debris of the city's final days and then finally finds a newspaper announcing the evacuation.

Jim makes his way to a church where he has his first encounter with the infected. He's rescued by Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley), who fill him in on what he's missed and reluctantly agree to go with him to his parents' house so he can find out what's become of them. After Mark becomes infected (and is subsequently killed by Selena), Jim and Selena find refuge with Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his daughter, Hannah (Megan Burns), and together the four set out in search of a military outpost where, it is said, there is "the answer to infection."

As I said, the film starts out really excellently. Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland craft an incredible amount of tension immediately and manage to sustain it for nearly two hours. The "infected" are introduced in an effective way and used sparingly right up until the climax, allowing the idea of them to build up for the audience before they begin to dominate the screen. The film's final act tends to be a bit conventional, becoming a one man army situation as Jim mows people down to save himself, Selena and Hannah, but that can't erase what the film accomplishes in it's first brilliant two-thirds.

The characters, particularly Jim and Selena, are well-drawn and well acted. I'm not really familiar with Naomie Harris outside of the Pirates of the Carribean films but she's pretty awesome and by all rights should be a much higher profile actress by now. Cillian Murphy, who's been carving out a nice niche for himself as a character actor, carries the film with aplomb, guiding Jim through the subtle shifts that takes him to the point where, for just a split second, he and the infected are indistinguishable. His transformation is part of the film's exploration of human nature outside the boundaries of society and while the screenplay doesn't do quite as much with that theme as it could, it nevertheless manages to make its point. 28 Days Later is definitely better and more thought provoking than your average horror movie.

Review: Trainspotting (1996)

* * * *
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlisle

So, it only took 14 years, but I finally saw Trainspotting. To put this in the proper perspective please note that I saw Swimfan in the theatre. It's amazing the things we make time for. As usual when I find myself playing catch-up with films like this, I really didn't know what I was missing. This dark and sometimes nasty (I still haven't fully recovered from the toilet scene) movie is an absolute masterpiece.

Trainspotting explodes out of the gate with a chase down the streets of Edinburgh as Iggy Pop’s “Lust For Life” plays in the background. The song captures the hedonistic, devil may care spirit of the characters, though the title is a bit misleading, as none of them really have a lust for life but rather a longing for oblivion. The story is seen through the eyes of Renton (Ewan McGregor), a heroin addict who will try at various points throughout the story to get clean. His success is impeded by the fact that most of his friends are also heroin addicts and that part of the pleasure of the addiction comes from the camaraderie that blooms out of getting high. His friends are Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), who is obsessed with Sean Connery, Spud (Ewen Bremner), psychotic Begbie (Robert Carlisle), and Tommy (Kevin McKidd), who starts out the film clean but slowly descends into addiction and death.

With the intervention of his parents, Renton does eventually manage to get clean, escape Edinburgh, and get work as a realtor. He’s well on his way to becoming a regular, upstanding citizen but then his past catches up with him, first in the form of Begbie and then in the form of Sick Boy. At first his two guests simply annoy him (particularly when he finds out that Sick Boy has taken it upon himself to sell his TV), but things get serious when they get him involved in a drug scheme that sees him falling off the wagon. In the film’s final moments Renton informs us that he’s going to get clean again, but we have our doubts. We have, after all, heard this before.

Directed by Danny Boyle, the film is visually quite stunning. Some scenes play out as drug induced fantasies and nightmares while others take on a grim reality that, taken together, captures the highs and lows of addiction. The most wrenching scene involves the fate of the baby who is always crawling around the drug den where Renton and his pals congregate. Her sad, sickening demise is not particularly surprising and neither, really, is Renton’s reaction: “I’m cooking up.” Heroin is the balm that enables him to deal with life, though it is also of course robbing him of his life by usurping everything else in it. At his worst, all he cares about it heroin and everything else falls away in his desire to use it, to get it, and to get more of it.

When the film was first released it was accused of glamorizing addiction, leading me to wonder if those accusers saw the same movie I did (Bob Dole, one of the more vociferous opponents of the film later admitted that he’d never actually seen it). What about the filthy, decaying rooms in which the characters spend their time, the scabs and scars that mark their bodies, is supposedly romanticized? I think Trainspotting is actually a great anti-drug movie because it shows the balance of pleasure to pain inherent in addiction. Some of the visuals look cool, but not cool in a “wow, I’m going to go try heroin” kind of way, but rather in an “I’m glad I didn’t have to try heroin to be able to see that” kind of way.

The film made a star of McGregor and it’s easy to see why. Even when Renton is at the very depths of suffering and anguish, the performance itself is charismatic. He inhabits Renton easily, blurring the line between actor and character, and he captures both the “fuck it” attitude and the guilt that follows the consequences of that attitude. He feels badly about what happens to Tommy, perhaps not because he really thinks it’s his fault but rather because he’s glad it happened to Tommy and not himself, and he feels badly when bad things happen to Spud, but at the same time he lives from moment to moment. The way that he lives, every second could be his last so he’d better move on, leave the guilt behind, and make the most of whatever comes next. As anti-heroes go, he's fairly compelling and a large part of that comes from McGregor's ability to weave humor into pathos; Renton is a sad character, but he's also very watchable and engaging. Kudos to McGregor and, of course, to Boyle for bringing Renton and his world so vibrantly and brutally to life.

Review: Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

* * * *
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Dev Patel

It’s strange that a movie which begins with scenes of torture, which traces a life of poverty and brutality, can end up being so uplifting, but that’s the magic of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. I didn’t expect to like this movie as much as I did; I figured I’d react in much the same way I reacted to Juno, another movie I didn’t get the chance to see until after it had received a mountain of praise: it’s good, but it’s not that good. Well, Slumdog is that good.

The story is cut up into two threads which will eventually merge. In the present day Jamal (Dev Patel) is a contestant on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, being viciously questioned by the police on suspicion that he’s cheated his way to the million dollar question. As they go through the questions he’s been asked, he explains how he knew the answers, relating the story of his life in the process. This method of storytelling isn’t particularly groundbreaking but Boyle breathes life into it, running many of the flashback scenes at a frenetic pace and a sometimes startling intensity. The present day scenes act not only to break up the story into digestible pieces, but also offer the opportunity to catch your breath.

Jamal has had a hard life. Orphaned at a young age, he and his brother, Salim, live a vagabond lifestyle, having various adventures as they try to survive and make a place for themselves in the world. Latika (played as an adult by Freida Pinto), a fellow orphan, becomes a point of contention between the brothers and the driving force in Jamal’s life. She proves elusive to Jamal, always, somehow, slipping through his fingers. The older they grow, the further away from him Latika seems to drift and Boyle consistently films her to emphasize that distance and the mirage-like facet of her being, showing her reflected in mirrors, through glass which distorts her image – she’s more dream than reality for Jamal.

Though the fairytale romance – with Jamal cast as the pauper turned prince and Latika as the captive princess – is the driving force giving shape to the narrative, underneath the romantic sheen is the harsher reality. The film never looks away from the poverty which surrounds Jamal and the very ordinariness of children playing (and living) in heaps of garbage makes it all the more jarring. As Jamal grows and Bombay becomes Mumbai and globalization takes hold, transforming the skyline with big, modern buildings, the poverty remains. When Jamal and Salim meet again as adults at the top of a building under construction, Salim points to an area of the city below them and states that their slum used to be there. It’s a business district now, a sign of progress sweeping through the city – but with all this progress the people at the lowest echelons of society haven’t been raised out of poverty, they’ve just been moved further to the fringes. Things are just as bad as they’ve ever been; you just have to look for it in a different place now.

This movie reminded me a little of Fernando Meirelles’ brilliant City of God - though Slumdog is about ten times less depressing, perhaps because its ending is less realistic. The optimism of the film’s conclusion works, though, because rather than deriving from material gains (Jamal never seems like he cares much about the money), it stems from the connection between one human being and another, which has no monetary value and which I think everyone can relate to on some level. It’s a fantastical story, but also very human and that’s what makes it so powerful.