Allied

Robert Zemeckis’s past two films The Walk and Flight both fell massively short of the mark, with more gloss than quality storytelling. Now he’s taking on a classic genre, the wartime epic romance, and putting his own spin on it with Allied.

It’s the height of World War II and Royal Canadian Air Force officer Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) is travelling to Casablanca in French Morocco as part of a planned assassination of the German ambassador. His partner is French Resistance fighter Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard). The two are to pose as a married couple for cover as they prepare for the mission, however they grow a little too close and after completing the assassination they move back to London to start a life together. A year after their marriage, Max finds out from the Special Operations Executive that Marianne may be a suspected German spy and that he is to help determine if she can be trusted. If she is found to be an enemy agent, Max must execute her by his own hand.

With what might be most closely described as the first act of Allied, we see the two meet in France and swiftly plan their pseudo-marriage and the assassination. This should initiate a spark of character development that draws us into this sweeping romantic war film - the sort of film we haven’t seen in a very long time - but what we get are stale cardboard cut-out roles that only really prepare us for a decidedly tepid film overall.

Before we know it, Max and Marianne have settled down in London and already have a baby girl. We’ve skipped a whole crucial stage of empathy-building and by the time the rumours of Marianne’s allegiance make it to Max, we couldn’t really care less about the end result because we’re not invested in their relationship. Despite all the tabloid hearsay that plagued this film’s production, there’s just no chemistry between Pitt and Cotillard.

The film continues along at a sluggish pace, and makes sure you’re aware that it sees itself as a sort of new-age Casablanca, dangling comparisons around blatantly. The same overly-syrupy filmmaking that we saw in Flight is also present here, with sweeping tracking shots and sentimental strings at every corner. There’s a lack of emotional contour to the film because of this and it all blends into one.

That being said there are some great set-pieces in Allied, particularly the scene when a German plane is shot down during the Blitz and starts to spin out of control down towards their house. As always Zemeckis uses effective and nuanced CGI to blend digital elements in the background, and overall the film looks great, if overly smooth and saccharine.

Despite these few-and-far-between moments, Allied is unfortunately not a return to form for Zemeckis. Although all his sappy directorial decisions are not as adverse to the overall film as the total lack of allure between Pitt and Cotillard and the stagnated characters that they inhabit.

The Big Short

It seems like a low-blow to make a devastatingly satirical look at events so closely linked to the Global Financial Crisis when it’s effects are still being felt around the world, but Adam McKay (creator of Anchorman, Step Brothers and The Other Guys) strikes an empathetic balance with The Big Short. 

The year is 2005 and Michael Burry (Christian Bale), a mathematical genius and hedge-fund manager realises that the stability of the U.S housing market is being undermined by high-risk subprime loans. Burry predicts the market has approximately two years before a crash and decides to bet against the housing market with credit default swaps. Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) hears of this and decides to get in on the game and, thanks to a misdialed phone call, alerts another hedge-fund manager, Mark Baum (Steve Carell) to the scheme. A pair of young investors find a booklet of Vennetts and also hope to make some money out of default swaps, enlisting their friend and retired banker Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) to help complete the transaction. 

The most crucial part of The Big Short is its focus on two shades of immorality. It pits those that recognise and take advantage of the housing market’s impending doom against the bankers that arrogantly continue to saturate the housing bubble. It doesn’t make it difficult to take sides - the four leads do at least have some empathy for those that will be hit worst by it - but that’s not really the point. It serves as a darkly enjoyable indictment of the financial industry’s greedy tunnel-vision. McKay creates an interesting focus on detail where he breaks the fourth wall with celebrities such as Anthony Bourdain, Selena Gomez and Margot Robbie explaining - or more precisely, dumbing-down - the financial terms operating within the scenes. Personally, these snippets didn’t particularly help me understand everything at play, but rather served to relax me enough into the story that I was happy to let the jargon go over my head. Of course the experience will be different for different viewers but I feel this was at least partly McKay’s intention. Otherwise he would have used Margot Robbie with a play-school diorama, not Margot Robbie in a bathtub. 

The four leads divide the film into different stories that really only slightly interweave as news of the scheme spreads, and most of the performances are great. The only issue with the way they emerge are the short backstories. They feel tacked-on, at times unnecessary and more crucially, jarringly break the satirical tone. Steve Carell is more-believable in this role than he was in Foxcatcher, and that’s not just because he’s constantly angry or that the comedic material is more to his style but because in that film he was so out of his own skin that I found it impossible not to just see a heavily disguised Steve Carell, whereas here he really makes Mark Baum his own. The same can’t be said about Gosling’s Jared Vennett, whose charismatic veneer can’t outweigh his belligerent lack of empathy. 

Christian Bale’s mildly-autistic performance is book-ended by a drumming heavy-metal admiration and a mathematical temperament. Like most of the leads, he has a refreshing honesty about him - particularly when he discusses with his investors via emails - and thankfully Bale doesn’t lean as heavily on the ‘rain man’ act as I had expected. Brad Pitt’s character is probably the most interesting in the movie, with his unusually subdued performance he portrays a man that has conflicting moral predicaments which become much more evident when the crash occurs. The Big Short undoubtedly takes influence from The Wolf of Wall Street, particularly in its willingness to break the fourth wall, but also in its editing style. McKay is not as heavy on the montages as Scorsese but its sense of hyperactivity is the same. Which is not to say that this is on par with Wolf but it is able to keep an audience’s attention through similar techniques. 

The Big Short proves that McKay can commit to satire with a strong sense of purpose. It catches the apathy of high-finance whilst still hinting at the human-suffering the crash causes, bolstered by some great performances from the leads.You’ll be laughing all the way through and feeling guilty about doing it.   

By the Sea

It’s no secret that I was less than impressed with Angelina Jolie Pitt’s last foray into the directing world with Unbroken. Now she’s back with what appears to be a much more personal story in By the Sea. 

Winding down the mountains toward the sea-side in an elegant convertible, American writer Roland (Brad Pitt) and his wife (Angelina Jolie Pitt) sit silently as he lights-up a cigarette, the first of many he’ll have throughout the film. Vanessa is an ex-dancer and is clouded in a mysterious depression. Her attitude and his failed career/spiralling alcoholism has caused the two to grow disparate, however as much as the trip is about Roland gaining inspiration for a new book, it’s also a chance for the two to rekindle their relationship. A chance that Vanessa seems fine to squander. 

Staying in a luxurious villa-style hotel, Vanessa frequently stays home, often not even venturing out onto the balcony, while Roland gets to know the town-folk, hoping to find an interesting character amongst them. In the next room, a young couple Lea (Mélanie Laurent) and François (Melvil Poupaud), just married, prove fascinating to Vanessa and she starts to interact with the couple and introduce them to Roland. 

A thriller this is not. Stretches of this film are so agonisingly bland that I gained a whole new appreciation for cinema design. How did they choose what felt to use on the walls? Who designed these cup holders? Much more interesting than watching the film during these sequences. The first 20 minutes or so are so depressingly dull and repetitive (day after day) that I was sure this would all amount to possibly the worst film I’ve ever had to review. However soon afterwards, the story takes a turn that I can only describe as ‘voyeuristic’ - that’s about as spoiler-free as I can make it - and this at least brought some interest back. 

Ultimately this film’s downfall is its characters, a pretty-big sin for an utterly character-driven drama. Jolie’s Vanessa starts off a depressed social introvert/agoraphobic, brought on by a traumatic event slowly pieced together through flash-editing - a technique that certainly doesn’t suit this type of film and proved more of a distraction - and the character really doesn’t evolve enough out of that state. The aim is obviously to draw pity towards Vanessa, but she comes off as more annoying than anything else, despite whatever troubles she may have. Roland seems a little more fleshed-out, despite being a struggling alcoholic writer - how original - and his interactions with the barman Michel (Niels Arestrup) are probably the most interesting scenes in the film. 

Sure, the view of Malta and scenic shots of the ocean looks beautiful, but the story flows about as willingly as a stagnant pond. It feels like an unhealthy mix between a romantic Arthouse film from the French New Wave and poorly integrated stylistic elements from a Fincher or even Aronofsky film. It just doesn’t work. 

By the Sea is another disappointing project from director Jolie, however where Unbroken was unoriginal and tedious, this film squanders its opportunity to embrace originality. It's bland opening act is only replaced by a weird subplot, carried through by characters that are near-impossible to care about. Jolie has said the message of this film is about grief and how it consumes you. Ultimately the only grief I felt was for my wallet.

Fury

David Ayer's follow up to his directorial debut, Fury, is an intense piece. He somehow has a way of getting under your skin and putting you in situations that most of us would hope to never experience. World War II was long over by the time I was born, yet I have felt the fear that tank units would have felt in the European War.

The film focuses on a tank and the men who command it in the final push into Nazi Germany in 1945. Don Collier (Brad Pitt) is loyal to his men and will do anything to get them home. After a mission that leaves one of the crew dead, he is assigned a new soldier in Norman (Logan Lerman), a young clerk with no battle experience.

This movie looks at some of the atrocities of war, although at times they can be a little exaggerated. Collier and his crew are obsessed with killing every single Nazi they find and do this, even when the enemy has surrendered and is unarmed. The violence is not hyper-real as you would expect in a movie like this, but rather it is portrayed realistically (apart from your typical Hollywood showdowns).

The film also looks at certain aspects of total war. Total war is when one of the sides in a war mobilises its entire population for the purposes of winning the conflict. As such, there are sometimes children sent into battle. This film shows the stark reality of the Germans being so desperate that they send in children as young as ten to fight.

The performances in this movie are extremely intense and well done. Pitt has mastered the American soldier by now, but his character is more sorrowful than Aldo Raine in Inglourious Basterds. His thousand yard stare belies the pain he has witnessed and felt. Logan Lerman's performance is also exceptional. As someone on the opposite end of the spectrum with absolutely no battle experience, he shows all the innocence that comes with fighting and losing people close to you.

Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña and Jon Bernthal all play great supporting roles that display talents far from what they have been known for. Peña had worked with Ayer on his previous feature, End Of Watch, and he couldn't be further from that LA cop in this movie. LaBeouf also has come a long way from the child star that he once was with an incredibly intense performance. Bernthal builds on his amazing rep that came with his performance in The Wolf Of Wall Street.

Verdict: An intense look at the horrors of war and the toll that it takes on the soldiers who fight not for their countries, but one another.

Classic Movie Review: Babel (2006)

In the late 90s to mid 2000s, a swath of films that were made up of interconnected stories were released. Unlike these other movies, like Traffic, Crash and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (all of which are fantastic), Babel took this film structure and made a far greater film. Maybe it's the lack of an ensemble cast (with only two big actors known two mainstream audiences) or maybe it's the plausible storyline that plays on the audience's fears that make this an excellent film.

The film takes place in three different locations around the world and focuses on four groups of characters. The first group of characters are Moroccan goat-herders. Abdullah (Mustapha Rachidi) buys a rifle from one of his neighbours to shoot jackals that prey upon his herds. He gives the gun to his sons Ahmed (Said Tarchani) and Yussef (Boubker Ait El Caid) when they go into the hills. The two brothers begin to fight about who is a better marksman and end up shooting at a bus full of tourists. This is called an act of terrorism by the United States and there is pressure on the Moroccan authorities to find the culprits. The police eventually track down Abdullah, Yussef and Ahmed. Ahmed is shot and killed by the police, at which stage Yussef gives up and surrenders to police custody.

Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett) are two American tourists on holiday in Morocco. Susan is increasingly worried about getting sick from poor hygiene in what she considers an unclean country and is desperately missing her children back home. While they are on the tour bus, a gunshot hits Susan in the neck. Being too far to get to any major cities, the tour guide suggests that they go to his village which is closer, much to the apprehension of the other tourists. The busload of tourists eventually decide to leave Richard and Susan in the village. They are later airlifted out and taken to the US embassy.

Back in America, Amelia (Adriana Barraza) is looking after the children of Richard and Susan. She is trying with some difficulty to find someone to look after the children while she goes to Mexico for her son's wedding. Her nephew, Santiago (Gael Garcia Bernal) suggests that she brings the children to Mexico. On the way back, there is some confusion at the border and Santiago, who has been drinking, makes the mistake of driving through the border and into the US, prompting a chase in the night. Santiago stops the car and tells Amelia and the children to stay there and he'll come back for them. Amelia and the children stumble through the desert and get separated. Amelia gets found by the border patrol, who also find the children. Amelia ends up being deported to Mexico for working as an illegal immigrant within the US.

The final story, which is seemingly unrelated to the rest of the film, follows Chieko Wataya (Rinko Kikuchi), a deaf-mute schoolgirl from Tokyo. She is self-concious about her disability and tries very hard to get the attention of boys when she is out with her friends, as she wants to lose her virginity. All the attempts she makes are unsuccessful. A young police officer, Kenji Mamiya (Satoshi Nikaido), has been asking to question her father. Chieko believes this is to do with the suicide of her mother, but it is in fact to do with the ownership of the rifle used to shoot Susan in Morocco.

Now that the plot's out of the way, we can finally talk about the rest of the movie. First off, I love the symbolism of the title of the movie. In biblical terms, the Tower of Babel was built by humanity who had a united language and believed that they could reach God if they built a tower. As punishment, God made all the people on Earth speak a different language. One of the major themes in this film is being able to communicate with one another, whether it be Richard trying to tell the Moroccans what is wrong with his wife or Chieko being able to communicate with anyone.

I really like the casting in this film. Brad Pitt is fantastic and gives one of the best performances of his career, although we see very little of him. Likewise, Gael Garcia Bernal gives a fantastic performance, but he is not in the film for long. The two standout performances come from Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza. The scenes in which Barraza is walking listlessly throughout the desert are fantastic. Kikuchi is also fantastic and it is her story that I can relate to the most. Having a disability myself, I watch the story of Chieko and I can see parallels between that story and my own teenage years.

Surprisingly, that is not the only story I can relate to in this film. I too have been injured in a country where I don't speak the language and although my injury wasn't as bad as being shot, you do feel a certain helplessness in being unable to communicate what you need. Perhaps this is why this film resonates with me, because half of the movie's plot is recognisable.

The soundtrack for this film really sticks out for me too. Gustavo Santaolalla's score is fantastic and his use of guitar makes the film even more evocative. All of the Mexican music played at the wedding is fun to listen to and it makes me want to travel there all the more.

Verdict: A powerful movie that makes you think about how small the world has become.

World War Z

This movie is not for the hardcore fanatic of zombie pop culture. It was made for a mainstream audience who might be interested in seeing what this whole zombie thing is about. It's probably best to stick with The Walking Dead if you are a fan.

The plot revolves around Gerry (Brad Pitt), a former United Nations investigator, who, at the behest of his former colleagues, is sent around the world in search of something that will stop the zombies (not necessarily a cure). He leaves his family on an aircraft carrier and flies off around the world, encountering many people along the way. Gerry goes to South Korea, Israel and Wales in search of something to help.

This movie was very intense and chaotic and the setting was unsettling. This came from the fact that normally zombie films and TV take place in a contained environment, such as a shopping centre or prison, but here it was global. The scenes where hordes of the undead are swarming were intense and at times I didn't quite know what was going on.

The fact that the majority of the movie is chaotic makes the ending all the harder to watch. The final 40 minutes returns to a climax that would fit well in any other zombie film. It is the classic stalking of the hallways trying to reach the ultimate goal, but due to the intensity of the first part of the film, it just seems distracting. Maybe this is due to another writer coming in and rewriting the entire ending of the film. Apparently, it was supposed to end with another climactic battle, which would have kept up with the pacing of the entire film.

The cast of this movie is very chaotic as well. Brad Pitt and his family are the only constant. Except we don't see his family all too often, which is good because is wife Karin (Mireille Enos) is one of the most annoying movie characters ever. Matthew Fox (Lost) is supposedly in this film, and quite prominently billed, but I did not see him once, so that's a waste of some cash.

Verdict: Max Brooks' novel did have potential, but it was poorly executed and even though it takes place on a global scale, the world feels kind of empty but not in a I Am Legend way.