Review: In Bruges (2008)

* * * 1/2
Director: Martin McDonagh
Starring: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes

I've never really been a fan of Colin Farrell, but if he made more movies like In Bruges, I could easily become one. People have been recommending this movie to me for two years now and I'm so glad that I finally got around to seeing it. With a great script and great performances all around, In Bruges is the kind of film you can watch again and again.

The story focuses on Ray (Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson), two hit men who've been sent to Bruges to lay low for an indefinite period of time. For Ray this is just about the worst thing that can happen (just about - the worst worst thing has already happened) and he develops an instant hatred for the city. He's unimpressed by the scenery, he's bored, and he's just generally anxious to get back to Dublin. Ken, on the other hand, makes the best of things and devotes himself to experiencing the city, seeing the sights and trying to get Ray to enjoy it as well. Centuries old buildings don't really do it for Ray, though, and the only thing that sparks his interest is a film being made in town. To quote him directly: "They're filming midgets!"

Soon enough Ray meets a girl who helps him occupy his time while Ken learns the real reason that they've been sent to Bruges by their boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes). Harry orders Ken to kill Ray and though Ken has taken a liking to his young protege, he owes a great debt to Harry and is inclined to be loyal. When it comes down to doing the deed, however, he wavers and the film takes a few twists and turns before coming down to a shoot out between Harry and Ray.

Although the characters of In Bruges are really not nice people, it's one of the film's many strengths that you can still feel affection for them. Ray has done some very bad things but he's so tormented by them that he's drowning in his own guilt. Even if he "gets away with it," you know that he'll never really be away from it because for the rest of his life it'll be an albatross around his neck. In his performance Farrell expresses this inner turmoil by infusing Ray with a high energy that sees him constantly moving about, as if he might be able to outrun the past if only he can move fast enough. The times when the character is allowed to slow down, the real weight of his crime seems to press down on his shoulders and you believe that his remorse is genuine. Gleeson matches Farrell note for note and the two make for an excellent odd couple-like team.

Written and directed by Martin McDonagh (who earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay), In Bruges finds a good balance between drama and comedy. McDonagh has that Tarantino-esque ability to make two characters talking about random things just as compelling as sudden eruptions of violence, making the dialogue just as memorable as the action sequences. It excels as both a dark comedy and a thriller and despite Ray's consistent dislike of the city, it really makes me want to visit Bruges.

Friday's Top 5... Posters of the 1940s

#5: It's A Wonderful Life
Imagine it's 1946 and you see this poster having heard nothing about the film. Wouldn't you think to yourself, "Well, that looks like an uplifting romp!" Now imagine your surprise as the movie begins. Still, a classic is a classic and this poster definitely fits the bill.


#4: Casablanca
One of the few times when the "floating heads" style of poster art really works for me. A beautiful piece of work.


A poster that could easily work for just about any of the Tracy-Hepburn vehicles since many of them hinge on the question of who will get to wear the pants (answer: usually Tracy).


Posters like this one make me long for the days when actual thought and artistry would go into posters rather than just photoshop. It's absolutely gorgeous.


My favourite movie poster ever. Truly, there never was a woman like Gilda.

Canadian Film Review: The Diviners (1993)

* *
Director: Anne Wheeler
Starring: Sonja Smits, Tom Jackson

One of the advantages that books have over films is that it's easier to explore a story that spans decades in book form. People kind of expect books to be long (and tend to read them in bits and pieces rather than straight through in one shot) but prefer films to hover around that standard 2 hour threshold. The Diviners takes place over the course of several decades in the life of its protagonist and in their desire to compress the story to make it film friendly, the makers seem to have squeezed out all the elements that might give it weight.

The film focuses on Morag Gunn (Sonja Smits), a well-known writer who, in the story's present day, is experiencing trouble with her teenage daughter. As the situation with the daughter, who keeps running away, escaltes, Morag finds herself looking back on her life and tracing the line that has brought her to this point. Much of the film is told in flashback, giving us vignettes of Morag's life from her own childhood to that of her daughter. Many of the flashbacks deal with Morag's complicated relationship with her daughter's father, Jules (Tom Jackson), and the ultimate impossibility of their relationship.

Morag and Jules have known each other since they were children. As adults they start an on-again, off-again relationship that only seems to function for short spans of time before they have to be apart again. One reason that they are constantly parting is Jules' occupation - he's a musician who travels around the country to make his living and never stays in one place too long - but the main reason is more insurmountable. Morag is of Scottish descent whie Jules is Metis, and it creates a gulf between them based on Jules' experiences of intense racism. Morag will never fully understand what it's like for him, a sentiment which is later echoed in Morag's arguments with their daughter who, Jules points out, looks a lot more like him than her.

The scenes between Jules and Morag, where the issue of race is always the third character in the scene, are great both because of Jackson and Smits and because there's actual substance to them. Where the film suffers is in its constantly shifting timeline, which jumps around so fast that characters and their relationships hardly have time to develop. It's been streamlined almost into meaninglessness and we don't really get to know the characters well enough for the film to have any kind of emotional anchor. The adaptation would perhaps have been better served as a miniseries.

On a more positive note, I think that despite the problems with the film's construction, the character of Morag emerges as very strong and vital. I've never read the source novel by Margaret Laurence, but seeing the film makes me want to. She's a fascinating character, an iconoclast who challenges the mores and feminine ideals of her time. She's a character I would like to see in a more comprehensive and better focused film.

Maythew #8: Glenngary Glen Ross (1992)

* * * 1/2
Director: James Foley
Starring: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin

If you looked up "Actors' Showcase" in the dictionary, you'd find a still from Glengarry Glen Ross. There are few films that can compete with it in terms of the acting because the entire cast is simply at the top of their game. The writing is similarly stellar and though the direction left me a bit wanting, the film as a whole is wonderful.

The story takes place over the course of a night and a morning in a real estate office where things are desperate. Of the four salesmen, only Ricky (Al Pacino) is really in a good place while Shelley (Jack Lemmon), George (Alan Arkin), and Dave (Ed Harris) are all at the mercy of "the leads," a stack of cards held by office manager Williamson (Kevin Spacey) and doled out to reward good salesmen or punish bad ones. Only Ricky gets the good leads because only Ricky closes. Shelley needs a lead something desperate as he's got hospital bills to pay and the narrative arc that he goes through is amazingly played by Lemmon. He's such a sad, needy character that it's hard not to feel for him (though for a Simpsons watcher it's also kind of hard to look at him and not think of Gil).

While Ricky works on a mark, Dave comes up with a plot to break into the office and steal the good leads and then sell them. He shares his plan with George and then turns around and tries to blackmail George into breaking into the office for him, reasoning that he's the first person the police will look at and George is already an accessory to the crime just by listening to his pitch. Poor George.

The scene that everyone talks about, of course, is Alec Baldwin's brief appearance as the "motivational" speaker sent from downtown and the scene is indeed electrifying. There's a reason that it has taken on a life all its own, but the rest of the film is great too. Watching these actors playing off each other is never anything but a delight and the only real criticism I have of the film is that it never fully loses the stagey feeling that plagues so many stage to screen adaptations. The scenes often feel closed in, which works in some cases but is a bit distracting in others. All in all, however, Glengarry Glen Ross is a great film and one that has held up very well over the years.

Matt's Thoughts: They sure are good at swearing.

I love the fact that they don't let on who the theif is until the end, and you watch George throughout the film worried that he'll be carted off to jail for something that wasn't his own idea. I always wonder, in the end, if Dave is going through the motions of flipping out in an attempt to cover for the crime he thinks George commited, if he's furious because George told him he couldn't go through with it, and now thinks that he did and just trying to cut Dave out of the deal, or if he's just angry because someone else broke in before he and Dave had a chance to.

I always love Kevin Spacey as a villain, and I especially love that he's not really the villain in this movie; he's just a man doing his job. Shelley, on the other hand, is meant to be the sympathetic character, but I just don't really feel it. For most of the movie I do, of course, worry for him, but it's when he tries to pull one over on Williamson and grows evermore smug in his efforts to get Williamson fired, that I just feel very removed from the character. I just don't buy Shelley's pleas for mercy from Williamson after he just tried to do to Williamson what Williamson is forced to do to him, due to Shelley having done so in the first place.

As with many movies, I land on the side of K-Space.

Maythew #7: Session 9 (2001)

*
Director: Brad Anderson
Starring: David Caruso, Peter Mullan, Josh Lucas

If Session 9 had been the first movie my brother and I watched for Maythew, the series probably wouldn't have gotten off the ground. This is easily one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It's not scary, it's not interesting either in terms of narrative or in terms of its visual aesthetic, it's just dull. Dull, dull, dull.

The plot (if you care and you shouldn't) involves an asbestos cleaning crew that has been hired to work in a long closed mental hospital. The crew includes Gordon (Peter Mullen), Phil (David Caruso), Hank (Josh Lucas), Mike (Stephen Gevedon), and Jeff (Brendan Sexton III). Jeff is new, Phil and Hank are constantly at each other's throats over a woman, and something is obviously wrong with Gordon. As for Mike, he quickly disappears from work to sit down in the basement listening to old tapes of a patient with multiple personalities.

The film tries to emulate the atmosphere of The Shining, making it appear that the building itself is having an effect on the actions and attitudes of the workers. Is the building haunted? Evil? Are former patients still lurking around, waiting to do damage? In truth evil is brought into the building by the workers, specifically Gordon who is in the midst of an intense mental crisis. As his inner turmoil begins to bubble to the surface, the situation for everyone else becomes increasingly desperate - whether they know it or not.

The problems I have with Session 9 as a film are myriad, but I'll try to narrow them down to a few. The narrative is not cohesive, for one thing, and the story feels like horror's greatest themes slapped together. The characters are paper thin and their motivations are never properly defined. Perhaps worst of all, the film simply feels lazy. It relies too heavily on the viewer's emotional response to other films and tropes from the genre without bringing anything new to the table. It feels like a student project, to be honest, and not a particularly good one.

Matt's Thoughts: Session 9...is a cinematic abortion. I have no idea what I thought this movie was, but it most definitely was not this.

The characters gained no development through the film, the storyline was non-existant, and the most interesting character can be found only in the deleted scenes.

Session 9 was a last-minute addition to the Maythew viewing list due to our local video store having an insanely poor selection. There were about 8 other movies that I would have rather seen that had to be cut from the list, and I'm pretty sure I just ended up hitting 'random page' on wikipedia and landing on this.

The most confusing part of the movie is that it has 'generally positive reviews' all over the internet. Session 9 ruined my chances at Maythew 2: Electric Boogaloo. I am, as they say, disappoint.