Review: Spy (2015)

* * *
Director: Paul Feig
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, Jason Statham, Miranda Hart, Jude Law

As much as I loved Bridesmaids and enjoyed Melissa McCarthy in it, if you had told me in 2011 that she would become one of my favorite things about the summer movie season, I don't think I would have believed you. But 2013 brought The Heat, and McCarthy in all her foul-mouthed glory, and 2014 brought Tammy, which has some deep flaws but which I enjoyed nevertheless, and now comes Spy, a film which combines her ability to tap into the vulnerable humanity of a character and her facility with outsize moments of almost cartoonishly comic crassness to great effect. In that respect, Spy is second only to Bridesmaids, only this time McCarthy is the star and has her own scene-stealing supporting player in Miranda Hart to make the film ever so robust with laughs.

Review: Closer (2004)

* *
Director: Mike Nichols
Starring: Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen

Love is a battlefield. The characters in Closer take that notion to heart, waging a winner take all brawl which leaves them all a little worse for wear by the end. The winner? Anyone and everyone who doesn't end up with any of these idiots. This is a story about four increasingly repulsive people who throw the word "love" around while openly embracing misery and making sure to spread it around to others. Closer is the sort of movie people describe as being about adults, yet it centers on characters whose emotional maturity seems to have peaked at approximately the age of 12. To be sure, the performances (particularly that of Clive Owen) are occasionally electrifying, but good lord is this story, with its seemingly endless back and forth and back again, tedious.

Review: Dom Hemingway (2014)

* * *
Director: Richard Shepard
Starring: Jude Law

Most movies fade in from black. Richard Shepard's Dom Hemingway comes in from red and then comes charging at you as relentlessly as an angry bull. Its titular protagonist is a man who admits that he has anger issues and then proceeds to prove it in scene after scene whenever he's not too busy extolling his own awesomeness, which is so great that it takes on otherworldly proportions. It's funny, watching this film, to think that there was a time when Jude Law was stuck playing "pretty boy" roles because Dom Hemingway is anything but a pretty boy. He's violent, he's crass, he's deeply self-centered, and he provides Law with one of his most interesting roles to date.

Review: Contagion (2011)

* * *
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow

Steven Soderbergh's Contagion is a frightening film - not because of the virus that sweeps across the planet, seemingly unstoppable, but because of how it portrays society as little more than a thin veneer easily dismantled in a few quick steps. The almost apocalyptic vision of chaos and destruction that ensues when desperation and greed set in as a population becomes increasingly distrustful of the government's ability and desire to help them, is thought-provoking and skillfully rendered. While the film as a whole is not quite as strong as this particular element, it is ultimately an effective thriller, well-crafted and excellently acted by a cast packed with great actors.

Review: Side Effects (2013)

* * * 1/2
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Channing Tatum

“It’s the culture,” one character insists. He’s referring to the financial corporate culture which resulted in what he hopes is his temporary exile, but the line just as easily applies to other aspects of the world Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects explores. It’s a world where there is a magic pill for every ailment, a first resort pushed by medical professionals who have a vested financial interest in ensuring that the pills become a part of the fabric of everyday life. It’s a world where everyone is out for him or herself and will find a way to justify the most extreme actions in the name of self-interest and preservation. Soderbergh’s final film – a genre bender which at various times takes the shape of a thriller, a medical drama, and a courtroom drama – is a good one, which is not only well-crafted but contains hidden depths.

Review: Anna Karenina (2012)

* * * 1/2
Director: Joe Wright
Starring: Keira Knightley, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jude Law

When it comes to adapting classic literature, most films err on the side of caution, delivering straight forward pieces that stick as close to the source material as possible. What makes this new version of Anna Karenina, directed by Joe Wright and adapted by Tom Stoppard, so refreshing is that it finds a way to stay relatively faithful to the source material, while breathing fresh life into it through bold stylistic choices. Whether it ends up being regarded as one of the highlights of the 2012 movie year remains to be seen (and given the mostly mixed reviews, it seems unlikely), but it is certainly one of the most interesting.

Canadian Film Review: eXistenZ (1999)

* * * 1/2
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law

Where does the game end and reality begin? If the game is so realistic that the distinction isn't obvious, does the distinction really exist at all? David Cronenberg's eXistenZ is a film of big and intriguing ideas. With the help of a terrific cast (seriously, there isn't a weak link in the bunch) he explores these ideas in an effective and very engaging way.

The story takes place sometime in the near future when a game designer named Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) unveils eXistenZ, her new game, to a focus group. Before things can get underway, however, an assassination attempt is made on her and she flees with Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a marketing trainee. Because the assassination attempt took place as the game was being downloaded, Allegra worries that the game may now be corrupted and talks Ted into having a bio-port installed so that he can help her test the system. This involves a gas station attendant - named Gas (Willem Defoe) - shooting Ted in the back with a rivet gun, a fact which understandly makes Ted ill at ease (though he does go through with it). Gas, however, turns out to be more foe than friend and wants the ransom that has been placed on Allegra's head. She and Ted manage to escape and run to Allegra's mentor Kiri Vinokur (Ian Holm), who promises to help Allegra save her game.

Allegra and Ted enter eXistenZ and begin following the game's storyline. Things start to go awry, however, when they realize that they may have trusted the wrong person and thereby sent the game into chaos. Coming back to reality they realize that what's happened in the game may have infected the console, which in turn will destroy eXistenZ forever. Or will it? Are they still in the game? The film's spectacular finale involves many reversals and twists that keep you guessing in its final minutes.

Cronenberg, who wrote the screenplay in addition to taking on directing duties, keeps the story moving at a fast and engaging pace, and finds a good balance between action and the intellectual concerns of the story. Though it's primary concern is with the relationship between human beings and technology - and the psychological shifts and crises that can result from the speed at which technology is advancing - the story is more interesting for the way that it plays on ideas of body horror and how it uses those themes to subvert gender roles and assumptions. For example, though science and technology are male-dominated fields, the gaming equipment rather obviously alludes to the female side of reproduction, the cord connecting the system to the player blatantly resembling an umbilical cord. Another example is the bio-port and the scene in which Allegra plugs Ted into the game. She's literally penetrating him, taking the film up to a whole other psychosexual level. It's a film that leaves you with a lot to think about and discuss, but it manages to explore its themes without becoming weighted down by them.

All in all, I think that eXistenZ holds up really well, which isn't something you can say about all science fiction films, particularly those set in the near future. That being said, however, seeing this film for the first time just recently, I couldn't help but be reminded of Inception since both films are built on layers upon layers of story levels. Inception did a lot of things better, I think, and while that really shouldn't reflect on effectiveness of eXistenZ, since it came out a decade earlier and with a much smaller budget, I couldn't help but feel that its impact was ultimately muted. Still, I enjoyed eXistenZ a lot and definitely plan to revist it for future viewings.

Review: Sherlock Holmes (2009)

* * *
Director: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams

Sherlock Holmes was one of the films that I was most looking forward to in 2009 and yet I somehow managed to not get around to seeing it until just recently. I blame that on end of the year good movie oversaturation, which is when as much as you want to see a certain film, you've spent so much time in the theater lately that the absolute last thing you want to do is go to the theater. Why can't decent movies be released throughout the whole year? Is it so much to ask?

Right, anyway. Sherlock Holmes, starring the increasingly awesome Robert Downey Jr., was pretty much exactly what I'd been expecting: a fun, fast moving film with plenty of gritty charm. Downey plays Holmes and Jude Law plays his trusty sidekick Dr. Watson, though as the film begins their partnership is in the midst of being dissolved. Watson is engaged and has every intention of extricating himself from Holmes' bad influence, but Holmes won't let him go and pretty much acts like Watson's fiancee has just stolen his boyfriend. The undercurrent of homoeroticism between Holmes and Watson is played up by Downey and Law and though that apparently ticked off Sir Arthur Connan Doyle's estate, it's also one of the things that makes this film so particularly delightful.

The actual plot of the film involves the mysterious Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), who appears to have risen from the grave and threatens to take over the world with his mastery of the dark arts. It also involves Holmes' nemisis/love interest Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), who has made her way back into Holmes' life at the behest of a shadowy figure whose identity should be obvious to anyone even vaguely familiar with the Sherlock Holmes stories, and who will likely be the driving force in the inevitable sequel.

Directed by Guy Ritchie, the film explodes with bursts of kinetic energy in a series of solid action sequences. On a couple of occassions he slows down the action and allows Holmes to narrate, step-by-step, how he's going to come out the victor and then showing us the sequence again but sped up. It's a good strategy because Holmes is a character defined more by logic than by brawn and these sequences allow him to explain how even when things are getting physical, he's still proceeding in a methodically logical way towards the best possible conclusion (for him anyway; it doesn't work out so well for the guys he beats up). All in all, Ritchie and Downey do an excellent job at defining Holmes as a character, even though two of the character's more famous features (the deerstalker hat and "Elementary, my dear Watson") have been dropped.

The film doesn't run particularly deep (not that I was expecting it to; this is a Guy Ritchie movie, after all) but it's flashy and entertaining enough to keep that from really being an issue. It has great energy and the performances by the three leads are quite winning. The only real issue that I have with it is that it goes to such great lengths to set up the sequel that I half expected the words "to be continued..." to pop up right before the credits. It kind of left me with the feeling that Sherlock Holmes was more of a trial run and that the real movie will be the follow-up.