Review: Atomic Blonde (2017)

* * *
Director: David Leitch
Starring: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy

Atomic Blonde is less a movie than it is a soundtrack but, lord, what a soundtrack. A slick, bone-crunching action movie that aspires to little more than being cool as hell and succeeds at that with ease, this adaptation of the graphic novel "The Coldest City" is the sort of pulse-pumping, fleeting entertainment that the summer movie season was made for. Directed by David Leitch, director of the first John Wick film and a former stunt man, Blonde delivers one of the more realistic depictions of violence seen in cinema, to say nothing of one of the most relentless. This isn't the best movie I've seen all summer, but I can't say that it didn't deliver on exactly what its trailers promised: action, '80s music, Charlize Theron in all her badass glory, and style, style, style.

Netflix Recommends... X-Men: First Class (2011)

* * *
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Bacon

Because I watched The A-Team, Total Recall and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Netflix decided that I might want to watch X-Men: First Class, even though X-Men has fairly little in common with any of those movies because even when Netflix provides some reasoning behind its recommendations, it's still basically random. Until seeing this movie, I'd never actually seen any X-Men film in its entirety (I've seen almost all of X-Men except for the last 15 or so minutes) and I know pretty much nothing about the X-Men mythology except for what I can recall from the animated series which aired when I was a kid, so I'm probably not the ideal viewer for this film, but nevertheless I did like it. It's a vibrant film with a good mix of action, drama, and humor, easily accessible to someone like me while containing elements which allow it to fit in as part of the film series which preceded it (which, as I understand it, sort of eschew the concept of continuity as something pesky and unimportant anyway, so I suppose that "fitting in" wouldn't be too difficult).

Review: Filth (2013)

* * *
Director: Jon S. Baird
Starring: James McAvoy

The current pop culture landscape is so littered with a certain type of "complicated" protagonist that repetition has made it difficult for that character type to remain remotely interesting. The angry white male whose assholery masks deep wellsprings of pain is a character type that has been bled dry in film and television in the years since Harvey Keitel perfected it in Bad Lieutenant, so it takes a particularly great story, or a particularly brilliant performance, to make such a protagonist seem anything other than utterly derivative. Jon S. Baird's Filth, based on the novel of the same name by Irving Welsh, has that brilliant performance courtesy of star James McAvoy, and it has a story that, while not necessarily great, is solid enough when it isn't wallowing in the familiar or careening wildly off the rails.

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.

Review: The Conspirator (2011)

* * *
Director: Robert Redford
Starring: James McAvoy, Robin Wright

History is not linear; it’s circular. What goes around comes around again and again, which means that the best way to understand the events of the present is to look towards the past. Though Robert Redford’s The Conspirator takes place in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, it is equally about the current war on terror and the way that governments and the public react in times of uncertainty and political instability. At its core, the explores the question of how liberty can be of any value when governments can suspend during the times when it is needed the most.

Review: Wanted (2008)

* * *
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Starring: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman

Wanted is the kind of film you watch while constantly thinking to yourself, “Whatever, logic.” It does things that many of us would find irritating in other movies, but does them so well that they simply work. It’s nasty and brutal but it also has a finely tuned sense of fun that ultimately sets the tone of the piece. It is illogical and, objectively, pretty stupid but so awesome that you just don’t care. It’s to the film’s credit that though it was built for the big screen and summer audiences, it still plays well on DVD.

Review: The Last Station (2009)

* * *
Director: Michael Hoffman
Starring: Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, Christopher Plummer

The Last Station is one of those movies that was on my radar last Oscar season but slipped through the cracks due to the volume of quality films released at about the same time. As much as I love an ornate costume drama, I'm kind of glad I put this one off as long as I did because, while I liked it quite a bit, it didn't blow me away. It's a decent movie but nothing particularly special.

Set in 1910, the final year in the life of Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer), The Last Station is seen largely through the eyes of Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), Tolstoy's new secretary. Valentin is a passionate Tolstoian, eager to help advance the ideals that Tolstoy represents and which are aggressively pursued by another Tolstoian, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti). Valentin's faith is almost immediately shaken by two women: Tolstoy's wife Sofya (Helen Mirren), and fellow Tolstoy follower Masha (Kerry Condon).

One of the principles that Tolstoy advances is celibacy, which Valentin takes to heart until he meets Masha. Since Tolstoy himself hardly adheres to this principle, this laspe is really only a minor flaw in Valentin's vision of the ideal. The bigger problem is that Vladimir and Sofya are at odds with each other over Tolstoy and what will become of his legacy once he dies, and Valentin finds himself leaning more towards Sofya's side. As secretary and, in many ways, confidante to the increasingly lonely and isolated Sofya, he is privy to many of the ins and outs of the Tolstoy marriage. He sees the pain suffered by both Sofya and Tolstoy over the rift in their long and, for the most part, happy marriage and though he understands Vladimir's position - which includes making Tolstoy's works public domain - he finds that his sympathy increasingly lies with Sofya.

The story unrolls easily, starting out with more of a comedic bent and gradually becoming more dramatic as it gets closer to its sad conclusion. That being said, the film doesn't delve quite as deeply as it might have. Tolstoy is a towering historical figure and The Last Station doesn't really live up to his legend. As a study of the woman behind the famous man and her struggles in the face of his fame, however, it's a bit more meaningful. Sofya is considered selfish by Tolstoy's entourage but as a viewer it's easy to feel for her. Her husband, to whom she has devoted her life, for whom she copied the manuscript for War and Peace seven times, has slipped away from her in his final years, seemingly having replaced her with Vladimir, whose photo adorns the wall above his desk. Their power struggle, which is occassionally as much about Valentin's loyalty as about Tolstoy himself, drives the narrative, though the two characters have relatively few scenes together.

The thing that The Last Station really has going for it is the acting. As Sofya, Mirren truly is a commanding presence and though her actions sometimes border on farce, she's such a forceful character that you still take her very seriously. As Tolstoy, Plummer is a match for her at every moment and between them they convey the lifetime that their characters have spent together. The best scenes are the ones between Mirren and Plummer and it's really no wonder that they received Oscar nominations for these performances. I think the film is worth seeing for Mirren and Plummer (and, to a lesser extent, for McAvoy who renders an earnest and thoughtful performance as an idealist confronted with the reality of his ideals), but apart from the actors, there's nothing about the film that makes it anything more than merely adequate.

Review: Atonement

This is one of the most moving films I've seen all year. Well-crafted, well-acted, beautiful to look at, and featuring a fantastic score, this film worked for me on every level. Easily one of the most faithful adaptations I've ever seen, this is a film that I absolutely loved it from beginning to end.

The fim is faithful to the book on which it is based not just in terms of the plot, but also in the way that the story is told, going back and forth, splintering between one perspective and another.It begins with Briony Tallis (Saorise Ronan), a thirteen-year-old girl who is too smart for her age, and not mature enough for her intelligence. She tells a lie which results in the separation of her sister, Cecelia (Keira Knightley) from Robbie (James McAvoy), the son of their family's housekeeper, when Robbie is taken away to prison. There are a few reasons why she tells the lie, all of which feed into each other. First, she's seen a few things during the day that have gone on between Robbie and Cecelia (an incident at a fountain, a letter mistakenly sent, a tryst in the library) that she doesn't really understand, though she believes that she does. What Briony is lacking is the ability to really discern the context in which she is seeing these things and so rather than seeing the various shades of gray, all she sees is black and white.

Second, Briony has a crush on Robbie and is obviously jealous of what she sees transpiring between himself and Cecelia. If Robbie isn't going to be Briony's hero (and Briony's alone), then she will make him into the villain. Third, and perhaps most important, is the fact that Briony is an aspring writer and sees the situation as a story for herself to guide. The problem is, she lacks the maturity to guide it properly (i.e. honestly) and doesn't seem to understand the consequences of what she's doing, the fact that once “written,” her conclusion cannot be erased.

The early scenes establish Briony perfectly. Despite her age, she obviously considers herself very grown up, already thinking of herself as a Capital A artist as she completes the play she hopes that she and her cousins will perform that evening. Part of the reason why she begins developping her “Robbie is a sex maniac” story is to gain the upperhand on her cousin, Lola who, like herself, is young but attempts to behave and carry herself as if she's older. Being the story teller gives Briony power and allows her to play at being more grown up than she is.

Following Robbie's arrest, the story jumps ahead four years, to when he's a soldier in France, Cecelia is a nurse, and Briony (now played by Ramola Gari) is training to become a nurse and finally beginning to grasp the nature of what she's done. She wants to make amends, even though she suspects that it's too late. These scenes are also effective, conveying a different side of Briony, as she begins to see herself as we see her in the first act of the film. The end of the film, where Briony is played by Vanessa Redgrave, is heartbreaking on a number of levels, not only because we know what becomes of Robbie and Cecelia, but also because we know how deeply Briony regrets what she's done, how much she wants to take it back, how greatly she's punished herself for it, and how much it has come to define her life.

Although this is Briony's story, the central character is actually Robbie; and although Briony is the character who must atone for what she's done, the atonement of the title can also be seen as referring to Robbie, who is the Christ figure of the story and will suffer for Briony's sin. One of the more obvious visual allusions for this is when Robbie, ill from an infected wound (his wound, too, can be read as an allusion to Christ) and having walked a long distance to the beach of Dunkirk, hallucinates that his mother is washing his feet. This scene comes towards the end of the film, shortly after a tracking shot that lasts nearly five minutes and can only be described as epic. The shot follows Robbie and his two companions across the beach at Dunkirk, where thousands of other soldiers are waiting to be evacuated. In the background there's a ferris wheel turning, in the foreground we see the various ways that the other soldiers are killing time, including a group that's gathered to sing as a choir, a handful who are playing around on a carousel, and the unlucky ones who have to shoot the horses that won't be transported back. All the scenes of Robbie in France are great, but this shot is particularly beautiful, one of the most memorable ever to grace the screen. It should also be noted that it was apparently accomplished without the use of CGI.

This is an incredibly engaging film, one that brings you right in rather than holding you at arm's length. By the end, I found myself emotionally exhausted, the ending able to move me even though, having read the book, I knew what was coming. It is rare in my experience to see a film that so exactly evoke its source material right down to the minute details (the best example I can think of is the tryst in the library. See the film then read that section of the book: it is exactly the same, right down to the way Cecelia turns her head) without the source seeming almost like a crutch, like the filmmaker was so in love with the way it was originally written that he or she can't bear to make a change that would otherwise soften the transition from page to screen. Atonement the film manages to exist in its own right, becoming its own entity separate and apart from the book even while staying faithful to the book. This is an absolutely excellent film.