Two Days, One Night - review

Sandra (Cotillard) is a wife and mother who returned to work following a bout of depression to find out she is facing unemployment unless she can convince the majority of her co-workers to vote to give up their bonuses so she can keep her job.

After appealing the decision which saw a vote against her of 14-2, Sandra has the eponymous Two Days, One Night to visit and speak to her fellow employees to convince them to change their minds.

It is never explained why she left work and the reasons for her depression but it has left her at odds with her co-workers and the resulting fight to win back her job plays out like a modern day version of 12 Angry Men.

What follows is a series of emotionally charged confrontations powered by a blisteringly raw performance by Marion Cotillard who is utterly convincing as a woman driven to the edge by the pressure of the awkward situation.

It is a thought-provoking film that forces the audience to imagine what they would do if they were placed on both sides of a predicament that could be called One Angry Marion.

4 stars

Contagion - review

Contagion might not strictly be a horror film by definition, but it could be argued that it is infinitely more frightening than the likes of Insidious and Paranormal Activity 3.
Warning, this is not a *spoiler*.  Within 15 minutes of Contagion, Gwyneth Paltrow is dead.  Dead as disco or Colonel Gaddafi.  Turns out she was more crudded up than the monkey from Outbreak and is Ground Zero for a disease that will be responsible for killing over 2.6 million people worldwide.  Goes to show what happens when you eat healthily, listen to Coldplay and call your children silly names like Apple!
Driven by another terrific electronic score by Cliff Martinez (also responsible for the Drive soundtrack), the first 30 minutes of this film are the worst nightmare for someone with OCD.  Soderbergh tracks the path of the virus as it travels across the world as those infected dip their hands into that bowl of communal nuts at the bar or touch elevator buttons or door handles before convulsing and foaming at the mouth like a tweenager at a Justin Bieber concert.
Just as Jude Law's ridiculously annoying, and possibly Australian (I couldn't really decide from his accent), blogger attempts to get rich by claiming a homeopathic remedy is the cure to the disease, I wouldn't be surprised if Soderbergh and the producers have shares in hand sanitizer, because sales are going to go through the roof following screenings of this film!
As the outbreak spreads, the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organisation try to deal with the pandemic, controlling the spread of the disease and finding a possible cure.  Cue lots of scenes like this...

The CDC and WHO are the good guys fighting an unseen enemy in this old school disaster movie that features a fantastic cast (Cotillard, Damon, Fishburne, Winslet), and as he proves with Oscar winner Paltrow kicking the bucket so soon, the disease does not care about awards or celebrity status when claiming victims.  The gloves are literally and preverbally off, but not for the protaginists... due to health and safety fears, it is best to keep the latex gloves on!
As the authorities begin to get a handle on how to deal with the MEN-1 virus, the focus shifts slightly to hint that our fellow man can be just as dangerous as society threatens to break down due to the pressures of trying to survive.  At one point Fishburne's head of CDC tells Law's blogger that his panic causing lies and misinformation are just as damaging as the virus.  Law is also told that "blogging is writing.  It's graffiti with punctuation" but I'm sure Elliot Gould was talking about this site when he said it.
By having a large ensemble cast with multiple plot threads, it is inevitable that like the virus, some strains of the film are stronger than others.  Winslet and Damon make the most out of their parts, Law is on screen too much for my liking and unfortunately the wonderful Marion Cotillard gets lost in the mix and misses out on a suitable payoff to her storyline.
Overall the film, like the virus, loses momentum once a vaccine has been found.  Perhaps there is a reason why most films of this nature end quickly after the virus is defeated, here we get some sense of the fallout and after effects, but it does answer the question of what happened to Jennifer Ehle after Pride & Prejudice all those years ago.  Turns out she was working at the CDC.
Soderbergh almost manages to end it on a nice moment with Damon, his daughter and a digital camera which provides a clue as to the cause of the outbreak, which is then ruined by showing exactly what happened, as if to bludgeon home the point to stupid viewers who can't work things out for themselves.
Hopefully this won't be indicitive of Soderbergh's career if the rumours of his retirement prove to be correct.
If he does retire, I'm sure he'll be happy sleeping on a bed made of money gained from the profits of rocketing sales of hand sanitizer.

3 stars

Midnight In Paris - review

2011 has been a great year for cinema so far in terms of producing quality films and a full range of emotional responses in this film geek.  I've LOL'd (Bridesmaids), I've been brought to tears for the first time (Warrior), been shellshocked (Kill List, The Skin I Live In) and now Midnight In Paris has the honour of being the first film this year to leave me with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

Woody Allen is one of the most prolific filmmakers of all time.  He produces a film every film - take that Terrence Malick - but with such a high turnover rate, there is bound to be some quality issues from time to time.  Critics are always hoping to be able to tag each new Woody Allen film as "a return to form", like they are desperate for him to deliver another Manhattan. But Woody has left Manhattan behind and is in the middle of his Eurotrip that has included London (not successful), Barcelona (mildly successful), and now Paris (c'est tres bon!).
One of the criticisms thrown at Woody during his stay in London was that he shot a tourist's version of London, where everything seemed to be set at the Gherkin or other easily identifiable landmarks.  In Paris, he seems to be giving a nod and a wink to his critics by starting off the movie with a snapshot of a tourist's view of Paris (Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, etc.  It's very accurate, I've been there and they were my immediate impressions of it), but once this is finished he quickly gets down to business and focuses on telling us an utterly charming and funny story.
Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), a Hollywood screenwriter who dreams of writing a "proper novel" who joins his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams) in tagging along with her condescending parents on a business trip to Paris.  Enamoured by the vibe and the culture, Gil decides to walk the streets of Paris at night alone instead of hanging around with Inez's insufferable know-it-all lecturer Paul (a wonderful Michael Sheen), and hitching a lift in a vintage car Gil ends up partying the night away with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter and Ernest Hemingway... wait, that can't be right, can it?
Yes it can actually, because Midnight In Paris is Allen's love letter to the "Golden Age" of Paris and uses a fantastical time travel mechanism to transport Gil back to the roaring twenties where the creative and cultural elite descended upon Gay Paree.
Owen Wilson, once again doing an excellent job at portraying Owen Wilson, proves to be a natural fit for the Allen role and helps to sell the central concept with his charm and enthusiasm, so much that we don't care whether it is real or just in Gil's head.
This "Moveable Feast", as Hemingway called it, is filled with some delightful cameos; Adrien Brody is delightfully nutty as "Da-Lee", a relatively unknown (to me at least) Corey Stall is terrific as Hemingway and Marion Cotillard, the most beautiful creature to have ever graced the silver screen, is utterly beguiling as Picasso's lover and Gil's potential muse Adriana.  I myself would question returning to the present if it meant getting to stay with Marion.

However there is an underlying message to Allen's screenplay that works on a number of levels.
Gil's novel concerns a man who works in a Nostalgia shop, which Paul critiques as "Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present... the name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones living in - its a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present."
Gil realises during one of his midnight jaunts Adriana reveals she wishes she could have lived in the era of Belle Epoque and the people there yearn for the Renaissance, and the reality that by living in the past, it will never be enough and Gil is missing out on the present and what possibilities lie in store for him there.
This notion is also true for fans and critics of Woody Allen.  They spend so much time going on and on about how great his films were during the late seventies and early eighties, that they could be blinding themselves to the fact that Allen can still produce some terrific films today, and Midnight In Paris is one that can rank up there with the best of his back catalogue.
Just like the opening sequence of Manhattan always makes me want to go to the Big Apple, by the end of Midnight I was ready to book a another trip to Paris and immediately digging out my copy of A Moveable Feast... now who's getting all nostalgic?

5 stars