Maps To The Stars - review

In 2001, David Lynch took his pilot for a failed TV series set in Hollywood and turned it into the five star masterpiece Mulholland Drive.

This year, another director called David visits Hollywood and the result is a nightmare worse than the one that befalls Diane Selwyn.

Maps To The Stars is a complete and utter mess that, unlike Mulholland Drive feels like a rambling TV pilot full of subplots which go nowhere, characters that disappear without any resolution and Julianne Moore doing her very best Lindsay Lohan impression.

And like Lohan, it is vapid, shallow and a complete waste of talent. This Map To a the Stars ends in a review that gets only one.

1 star

Tracks - review

Mia Wasikowska goes walkabout with a bunch of camels in this true story of Robyn Davidson who completed a 2000 mile trek across the deserts of Western Australia in the 1970's.

Inspired by the National Geographic article and photographs which documented Robyn's story, this film recreates the "how" of the journey but never really gets to grip with the "why", despite adding in some flashbacks to try and give reason to the character's motivations beyond "I want to be by myself".

A beautiful looking film that will work very well as a picture postcard for the Australian tourism industry but doesn't quite deliver on the promise that the journey is more important than the destination.

3 stars

The Double - review

Jesse Eisenberg takes notes from his Social Network nemeses The Winklevii as he plays Simon James and his doppelgänger James Simon in Richard Ayoade's adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Double.

Simon is shy, awkward, quiet and timid. He works in a Brazil-esque office and goes through life unnoticed by his colleagues and the girl who lives opposite him who he has a crush on.

One day at work, Simon is introduced to a new employee James Simon who looks exactly like him. James is everything that Simon is not; confident, smooth, ambitious. After an initial curiosity and friendship, Simon slowly loses his mind as he believes James to be taking over his life.

The film's time period and setting is deliberately ambiguous (could be set in Europe or US) and the how and why of the doppelganger's appearance are equally unknown.

This generates an ever-increasing sense of paranoia and a genuine Polanski vibe with echoes of Repulsion and The Tenant.

Is James really a doppelgänger? Does he even exist? Are all the other employees playing an elaborate game on Simon?

Ayoade successfully recreated a French New Wave style with his directorial debut Submarine and with The Double evokes the feeling of Orwell, Kafka and Lynch, supported by terrific production design and a soundtrack by Andrew Hewitt that incorporates the environment with the sounds of typewriters, computers, etc.

A poster-friendly soundbite would be "It's Polanski's The Tenant meets Fight Club" and like the film's leading man (or men), The Double will stand up to multiple viewings.

4 stars

Only Lovers Left Alive - review

In spite of the constant thirst for blood and aversion to things like sunlight and garlic, there has always been something quite sensual and romantic about being a vampire.

An ability to appeal to the opposite sex, never growing old, eternal life, etc and let's face it, despite what Queen might have said, who wouldn't want to live forever?

But what exactly would vampires do with an eternity on earth?

Only Lovers Left Alive provides one possible answer to that question. They'd get bored!

Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is a Kurt Cobain-esque Gothic rocker recluse hiding away from the outside world in an old house in Detroit.

Eve (Tilda Swinton) is living in Tangiers, reading and hanging out in Souk bars with Kit Marlowe played by John Hurt.

Both are vampires and more importantly, husband and wife.

Were they the first of their kind? Unclear. As is the reason they live on opposite sides of the world. Perhaps they are just like any other couple and after centuries of being together they needed some time apart from each other.

And they have been around for centuries, that much is clear and even though they have spent that time cultivating knowledge of science, nature and the arts, Adam has grown tired of of the apathy of the "zombies" who inhabit the earth now, unable to appreciate the world and its cultural wonders.

So as he ponders a game of Russian Roulette with a wooden bullet, Eve hops on the next overnight flight to Detroit to pull him out of his slump.

Looking for a plot? There isn't one to be found here. This isn't a film about action or change, after all vampires don't.

This is a film about existence.

There is a melancholic scene where Adam describes to Eve how a giant theatre used to play concerts to thousands of people but now is crumbling and abandoned and nothing more than a car park.

Civilisations have come and gone and they are the only constant in each other's life.

It's a rather unique take on the mythology in how it showcases the normalcy of being a vampire.

Vampires might be allergic to sunlight and drink blood instead of red wine but there still human. They have family issues. They can hold a grudge, "Are you still made about that? It was 87 years ago." and they moan about having to get up out of bed to feed.

Here the vampires feast on blood taken from hospitals not because they have turned "vegetarian" like those who "sparkle", or dislike killing but because they are worried about the purity of the source, disdainful of the diseases and drugs that the "zombies" Adam refers to pollute their bodies with.

Rather ironic since they treat it more like a drug than food, feeling a euphoric high after every hit.

This is just a drop from the rich vein of dark humour running throughout the film, such as Jeffrey Wright's various nicknames for Adam dressed in a Doctor's outfit (Faust, Strangelove, Caligari) and the hints at the influence of vampires over such artistic legends like Wilde, Shakespeare, etc that appear on a wall of fame.

Many of the film's biggest laughs come from the unwelcome arrival of Eva (Wasikowska), Eve's "sister", the closest the film comes to having a Deus Ex Machina, injecting some (after)life into proceedings.

The script's wit is as razor sharp as their teeth and dripping with deadpan delivery by Hiddleston and Swinton who are both able to hint at the old souls behind the young eyes of these eternal creatures of the night.

Shot with an ethereal beauty and a killer soundtrack, it can easily stake a claim as the best vampire film since Let The Right One In.

4 stars

Glasgow Film Festival Review - Stoker

Stoker is adapted from a script written by Prison Break's Wentworth Miller (the fact he had it tattooed to his body must have made for an interesting cast readthrough) and is the first English language film from director Park Chan-Wook.
The fact that Park directed Oldboy means that he knows a thing or two about, how would one put it, the "unique family dynamics" at the heart of Stoker.
India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) is a rather odd, lonely girl dealing with the death of her father on her 18th birthday. While her mother (Nicole Kidman) is cold and distant, India finds herself developing a curious interest in her mysterious Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) who turns up at the funeral out of the blue.
With a title like Stoker, one might imagine lots of gothic imagery and references to the classic vampire story however in this particular tale, the name Stoker takes on a more literal interpretation. The word "stoke" means "to encourage or incite" and Charlie's arrival and subsequent actions certainly have this effect on India, to "stoke her" awakening in terms of her sexuality and possible family predilection towards violence.
As the film progresses the acts of sex and violence become intrinsically linked. There is one sequence which starts as a cliched scene of someone trying to wash away their sins that is given a devilish twist that brings to mind the French term for an orgasm "le petit mort", or "little death".
One of the most divisive aspects of the film has been Park Chan-Wook's mise-en-scene. Some critics have argued that the film is a case of style over substance but this is certainly no Terrence Malick film. The director's use of cinematography, sound design and Clint Mansell's score help to build an unsettling atmosphere and sensual beauty that prevent the film from tipping into melodrama and heighten the sporadic moments of ultra-violence.
The influence of Bram Stoker may not have been felt in the way many might have been expecting but there is another rather portly shadow cast over the film in the shape of Alfred Hitchcock, in particular his 1943 film Shadow Of A Doubt, with enough references to rival a Brian De Palma back catalogue.
In that film young Charlie (Teresa Wright) worries that her favourite person in the world Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton) is actually a killer.
Where Wright shies away from Cotton, in Stoker the revelations about Uncle Charlie only cause India to become more intrigued and attracted to her enigmatic relative.
This film might reveal it's hand earlier than Hitch would have but times have changed and he was more restricted with what he could and couldn't show. like its predecessor, this film succeeds on the strength of the chemistry between the leads and both deliver career-best performances.
Initially not that impressed with her in Alice In Wonderland, the talent Wasikowska has shown since has led this reviewer to mark that performance down to working within such a sterile CGI environment. Here she creates a complex character that is part Wednesday Addams and part Kevin a la the kind we need to talk about.
Matthew Goode, in the most difficult role, pitches it just right, never giving too much away behind that perfect poker face but oozing charm that lures India, Evelyn (an excellent Kidman) and the audience into wanting more.
Park, like Charlie, knows exactly how to seduce and manipulate his prey (in this case the audience), using every trick and tool at his disposal to cast a spell over them. It might not have the visceral impact or horrific sucker punch of Oldboy but Stoker is beyond a shadow of a doubt one of the year's most beautiful and haunting films.

4 stars