Review: Macbeth (2015)

* * *
Director: Justin Kurzel
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard

Like so many of Shakespeare's plays, Macbeth has been brought to the screen so many times - most famously by Orson Welles in 1948, Akira Kurosawa in 1957 (as Throne of Blood), and Roman Polanski in 1971; shockingly neither Laurence Olivier nor Kenneth Branagh ever did a screen version - that it's difficult to image how anyone could have a fresh interpretation to offer. Justin Kurzel's Macbeth is, generally speaking, a pretty faithful adaptation, telling a story that most will know in broad strokes even if they've never read the play, not deviating too wildly from the original text (though this version amps up the violence). Kurzel's version doesn't offer any new insights into the psychology of its protagonist, but it succeeds thanks in large part to a fascinating performance by Michael Fassbender in the lead - though when a film is this visually bold, the real star is the cinematographer (in this case, Adam Arkapaw).

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.

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: Frank (2014)

* * * 1/2
Director: Lenny Abrahamson
Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Fassbender

"Quirky" can have negative connotations when it comes to describing movies. Around the time that the Sundance Film Festival became ascendant, and independent movies increasingly became "independent" movies, quirkiness became a commodity, a form of cinematic gentrification used to make cookie-cutter stories seem somehow unique. The "quirky Sundance" movie quickly started to seem especially ubiquitous, a fact lampooned perfectly (as so many things have been) by The Simpsons in the episode "Any Given Sundance" when a film is described as “Paul Giamatti… is the world’s greatest super spy… who only exists in the mind of an overweight, agoraphobic jazz musician… played by Martin Lawrence in a fat suit.” In 2014, quirky movies are part of a battered tradition, but there are still movies who come by their quirkiness honestly, as a means of expressing deeper themes rather than as a lazy means of making a it seem more marketable. Lenny Abrahamson's Frank is one of those movies, a film which premiered at Sundance and in which one of its main characters is a man who wears a papier-mache head 24/7 - and that's only where the quirkiness starts.

Review: The Counselor (2013)

* * 1/2
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz, Brad Pitt, Penelope Cruz

It's easy to see why Ridley Scott's The Counselor landed with such a thud (both critical and commercial) when it arrived in theaters last fall. It's an aggressively inaccessible film, savagely violent in some places, thick with talk in most places. I admire the film for its confidence; mainstream films (and given its cast and its director, The Counselor qualifies as mainstream), even the good ones, usually seem like they've been put together by committee, designed to appeal to as many people as possible, but The Counselor has the courage to be its own animal and do its own thing. It's bold, it's fascinating, and it doesn't entirely work, but when it fails it does so on its own terms and there aren't a ton of movies you can say that about.

Review: 12 Years a Slave (2013)

* * * *
Director: Steve McQueen
Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong'o, Michael Fassbender

Whether its the story of IRA hunger strikers in the 1980s, a sex addict in the present day, or a man kidnapped and kept in slavery in the 1840s, director Steve McQueen has a way of telling stories in an unvarnished and largely unsentimental way, laying bare the unique brutality of each individual situation in a direct and unflinching fashion. This method worked to brilliant effect with Hunger, but rendered Shame just a touch too cold and clinical, and where 12 Years a Slave is concerned it falls somewhere in between (though it leans towards the Hunger end of the scale). This is a hard film, full of horrific events and evil in many guises, but although excellent overall it is also, at times, oddly bereft of passion. It's still one of the best (if not the best) films dealing the subject of slavery that I've ever seen, but its excess of formality and arm's length treatment of its subject does sometimes make for a film that favors the intellectual at the expense of the emotional.

Review: Prometheus (2012)

* * * 1/2
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron

Prometheus was probably one of the most anticipated movies of the summer, perhaps only behind The Dark Knight Rises, Brave, and The Amazing Spider-Man, but judging from post-opening weekend responses, it may prove to have the greatest difference between expectation and actual reaction. It may not be on par with Alien (which, it might be noted, also opened to fairly mixed reviews before settling into its place as a classic of the genre), but considered on its own terms, it's a pretty good movie.

Review: Haywire (2012)

* * *
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender

When Steven Soderbergh announced last year that he planned to retire after making three more films (which, for most directors, would mean retiring in 6 to 10 years, but for Soderbergh would mean retirement within, like, a year), it was shocking but, at the same time, made a certain amount of sense. It's shocking because he's still in his prime and he's such a consistently interesting and excellent filmmaker, but it makes sense because there are few achievements he has left to meet. He has an Oscar, has proved to be ambitious in both large-scale (the Che films) and smaller scale films, has had films that were huge commercial successes, and has made personal, experimental indies, and he's been ridiculously prolific (24 films in 23 years). Soderbergh is an artist with nothing left to prove, which is why he can turn his attention to making delightful genre pictures like Haywire without having to worry that his legacy will in any way be tarnished because he's not making "important" movies.

Canadian Film Review: A Dangerous Method (2012)

* * *
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen

It was probably inevitable that David Cronenberg would one day make a movie about Sigmund Freud, given his career-long preoccupation with the psychosexual. What wasn't inevitable was how tame that movie would be when he finally made it - well, tame for a movie where one of the central relationships centres on sadomasochism. Elegantly mounted but somewhat lacking in spirit, A Dangerous Method is a fine film, but ultimately minor Cronenberg.

Review: Jane Eyre (2011)

* * * *
Director: Cary Fukunaga
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Judi Dench

The familiarity that audiences generally have with the story of Jane Eyre should make it a difficult novel to successfully adapt. There have been so many versions of it in both film and television – between the two mediums a new version comes out every five to ten years – that it ought to be difficult to bring any new perspective to it, to make it in any way fresh. And yet, here is director Cary Fukunaga’s take (working from a screenplay adapted by Moira Buffini), a glorious looking adaptation that feels like a breath of fresh air. Here is an adaptation that gets it absolutely right.

Review: Inglorious Basterds (2009)

* * * 1/2
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent

Tarantino’s latest is a glorious mess of a movie that plays entirely by its own rules. It isn’t a film of any great depth, but as glossy summer entertainment goes, I don’t know that you can do much better than this one. It’s a violent, darkly comic, beautiful looking film that occasionally goes off the rails but ultimately makes for a great time at the movies.

The film begins like a western, immediately evoking early scenes from Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West (it begins, in fact, with the words “Once upon a time... in Nazi occupied France”). In the distance a dairy farmer sees the SS coming down the long dirt road. He sends one of his daughters to get water so that he can wash up. They wait anxiously as the Germans take their time and eventually the farmer finds himself sitting at his table with Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz in a disarmingly and sinisterly joyful performance), who coaxes him into revealing the whereabouts of the Drefyus family, whom he has been hiding. The family is slaughtered save for Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), whom Landa allows to escape and who lives for years by hiding in plain sight in Paris.

Elsewhere a group of Jewish soldiers, mostly American, have been assembled under the command of Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) for the purpose of killing Nazis. Dropped into occupied France in 1941, the group quickly gains a reputation for brutality and the Nazi high command becomes increasingly desperate to catch them. By 1944 the group is in league with British film critic turned soldier Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) and German film star/spy Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) in a plot to take out some of the major Nazis at a Paris film premiere. The premiere, as it happens, will take place at a theatre which Shosanna has inherited and she has a plan of her own to kill some Nazis.

The film boasts a wealth of characters with the typical Tarantino flair. One of the things I love about Tarantino’s films in general is that you never walk away from one thinking about that one really memorable character because there are always about a dozen really memorable characters and the casting is always perfect. I went into the film with a bit of trepidation regarding Pitt because the trailers made it look like he was really hamming it up. As it turns out he is hamming it up, but it works well with the overall, over the top feel of the film and I really can’t imagine the character being played any other way or by any other actor. However, as good as Pitt is and as extraordinary as Waltz – whose performance has been garnering the most attention – is, the real standout for me was Laurent, whose Shosanna is the heart of the story. Her performance, which is very understated and grounded, is on the other end of the spectrum from Pitt’s, giving the film a nice feeling of balance.

The film has been accused by some of trivializing World War II in general and the Holocaust specifically because there is nary a mention of The Final Solution. I don’t really think this accusation is fair because, as anyone who has seen the movie can tell you, the war as we know it isn’t really the war being dealt with in this film. Inglorious Basterds exists outside of history and in an alternate reality. Besides which, any direct dealing with the Holocaust wouldn’t fit with the film’s overall tone, which is darkly comedic. One of my favourite shots occurs during a scene when Hitler (Martin Wuttke) rails at his officers to find the Basterds. In the background there's painter creating a giant Hitler painting who keeps turning to study him and capture some nuance of his person. As with all Tarantino’s films, the beauty is in the smaller details.

If there is an underlying socio-political meaning to the film, I would argue that it doesn’t have to do with the darkness of the human soul but rather with the power of film itself. Film was an invaluable medium for Hitler and the Nazis, particularly the propaganda films directed by Leni Riefenstahl, who gets a few mentions here. The plot conceived by Shosanna involves locking the top Nazi brass in the theatre and then setting her stock of nitrate film prints on fire. Film, which helped give birth to the Nazi movement, is now tasked with being an agent of its destruction and thus Inglorious Basterds might be read as working to reclaim the medium from some of its worst abusers.

By and large, the film really worked for me, although there are two things that didn’t. First is the film’s use of David Bowie’s song “Cat People,” which I found jarring and really took me out of the movie, although this anachronism perhaps eases the way for the grand inaccuracy of the film’s finale. The second thing has to do with the film within the film. Much of Basterds is subtitled because the German characters speak German and the French characters speak French rather than falling back on the old movie standard of having characters speak accented English. Yet, in spite of this, the German propaganda film within the film is in English. That really bugged me. That being said, however, these are very small quibbles with a film that is overall incredibly entertaining.

Review: Hunger (2008)

* * * *
Director: Steve McQueen
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Stuart Graham, Brian Milligan, Liam McMahon

Hunger is not for the faint of heart. It spares the viewer nothing in its exploration of the hunger strike entered into by prisoners at Her Majesty's Prison Maze as a form of protest against the inhumane and often barbarous conditions of the prison. Early in the film a new inmate is brought in and refuses to wear a prison uniform. The guards look at him wearily – this is old hat to them now – mark him down as a “non-confirming prisoner,” have him strip and give him the blanket which will be all he’ll have to wear every day. He’s escorted to his cell which is covered wall to wall, floor to ceiling, with his cellmate’s excrement. I guess he wasn’t expecting company.

The story progresses like a relay race, starting with its focus on Raymond Lohan, a guard (Stuart Graham), switching to the prisoners Davey (Brian Milligan) and Gerry (Liam McMahon), and ending finally with Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), the Officer Commanding of the IRA prisoners. The common link between all of them is the toll that the prison conditions take on them. Lohan, for all the passion he displays during moments that can probably best be described as torture, does not relish his job. He seems to spend half his time soaking his wounded hands and the other half worrying that he’ll be assassinated. Of course, he has it easy compared to the prisoners, whose cells crawl with maggots and who are subject to brutal beatings on a regular basis.

The film never reveals the specifics of any of the prisoners’ crimes, which has the effect of isolating them from their actions, allowing us to see them as human beings rather than terrorists. It’s difficult to watch this without thinking of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The men in The Maze have participated in criminal acts, but that of course does not make them fair game to be subjected to criminal acts once they're locked up. That being said, the film isn’t necessarily taking sides and the guards aren't presented as a monolithic evil entity. It begins with Lohan going through the routine of his morning which includes checking his street for snipers and looking under his car for bombs. He and his wife live in fear and rightfully so, as the guards are constant targets of the IRA. It isn’t difficult to understand how it is that these men who spend every moment away from their workplace looking over their shoulders then come to work and take all that fear and convert it to aggression and anger. It’s a cycle of violence that accomplishes nothing but the escalation of violence and with each reprisal, the ante gets upped just a little bit more.

The starkness of the film is inescapable. Save for a brief sequence near the end, there is no musical score, just the sounds of violence and suffering in the prison; and many scenes pass in long, unbroken shots captured by a static camera. One such scene is a long dialogue between Sands and a visiting priest which is absolutely mesmerizing, moving from easy banter and small talk to a debate over Sands’ latest political manoeuvre – a large scale hunger strike – and the political and theological ramifications of what he’s undertaking. The scene is so engrossing that you forget you’re watching a movie and it’s jarring when it switches suddenly to a close up of Sands as he enters into a monologue about the mercy killing of an injured faun when he was a child. He believes in the rightness of what he’s doing, though the film doesn’t really venture into the politics of the situation. Hunger is essentially apolitical, though Margaret Thatcher makes a couple of brief appearances, a disembodied voice played over the prison scenes. It’s an interesting approach and more effective than actually seeing her speaking those words in news footage in that it highlights the chasm that between the political rhetoric and the reality. The government in this film is some distant thing, passing judgment on the prisoners while being indifferent to their suffering. The film is about that suffering, not the politics in which it has its roots.

As the film nears its conclusion, it becomes increasingly difficult to watch. The focus is on Sands wasting away and actor Michael Fassbender was obviously very invested in the role, given the dangerous amount of weight he lost to play it. It's really shocking to see him towards the end, so shocking that it detracts a little bit from the strength of his performance throughout the film because the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about it later is how he looked. Despite that, though, Hunger doesn't feel at all exploitative. It is a powerful, wonderfully crafted, minimalist masterpiece about human suffering.