Our Kind of Traitor

For a movie written by Hossein Amini (he also wrote everyone's favourite movie, Drive), based on a novel by spymaster John le Carré and with a cast of stars that should be impeccable, this thriller ends up being a laborious adventure in mediocrity. It probably has to do with the director Susanna White's first time attempt attempt at a thriller and the insanely distracting camera work.

Perry (Ewan McGregor) and his wife Gail (Naomie Harris) are having a holiday in Marrakech in order to reconnect after some specified bad blood between the two. One night, Perry meets Dima (Stellan Skårsgard), a Russian oligarch who soon reveals that he has previously worked for the Russian Mafia and has information he would like to exchange for he and his family's safety. Once back in London, Perry gets in contact with MI6 agent Hector (Damian Lewis), who deems the information Dima holds to be of value. However, he is unable to convince his superiors of the value and must embark on an unsanctioned mission with the help of Perry and Gail.

Despite being a relatively good story, there are a few points when the script gets sticky. Early on, there is a scene in which Dima meets with Hector for the first time and while it plays out like an amazing game of cat and mouse, it happens way too early in the story. This really affects some similar scenes that happen later on. The climax of the film also falls flat as well. It is something that you can see a mile away, but then when it happens, there's no real emotional response. I suppose one of the biggest distractions for me however, was Ewan McGregor's line readings. Whenever he said anything, it felt like he'd looked at the script for the first time and gone, "woah, I get to say that?"

But it's not as though the rest of the cast is this bad. Naomie Harris is a splendid performer and I really felt like she cared for the family they were trying to save. She didn't really have a chemistry with McGregor, but I'm guessing that's kind of the point. Stellan Skårsgard is always great at playing either the reserved quiet type or the over the top criminal. Here he straddles the middle ground quite nicely. It's good to see Damian Lewis returning to his natural accent because the American accent he does in the TV show Billions is quite grating. The only reason I bring that up is because this is how Susanna White must have got this job because she's a director on that show.

Finally, the camera work. I don't know where to begin. It's just so distracting. During the opening sequence, there was a highly stylised glittery thing going on that had me thinking, "Oh this is only for the intro, it'll settle down." But it didn't. The amount of reflective surfaces that they sparkled lights off was unbelievable. And then they decide to shoot it from some new and unusual angles. The result ended up being a disorienting mess. Some of the time, I didn't even know where we were supposed to be in the room.

The slowness of this movie made it nowhere near as enjoyable as it should have been. The story had all the intrigue that a spy movie should have, but it also just felt like a lighter version of 2014's A Most Wanted Man, also a le Carré adaptation. In fact the endings of both films are slightly similar, just this one feels a little more resolved. It just needed more excitement.

Danny Boyle to make 'Trainspotting 2'

Danny Boyle has been very busy recently. His Steve Jobs biopic has been getting some early praise from critics - and perhaps more importantly, Steve Wozniak - and today, just before the first public screening, he's announced that he plans for his next project to be Trainspotting 2, the follow-up to his classic 1996 film.

The sequel will be based on Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh's novel Porno which is itself a sequel to the original, which followed a group of Scottish heroin addicts in their passage through life. The film featured arguably one of Ewan McGregor's finest performances and also starred Ewen Bremner, Kevin McKidd and Robert Carlyle as the infamous Begbie.

Trainspotting screenwriter John Hodge has already provided Boyle with a script which he describes as "terrific", set ten years after the events of the first film, 2 will follow the four leads as they venture into the pornographic world. It's reported that McGregor, Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller and Carlyle have all signed up to appear in the sequel.  

P.S: Perhaps most interestingly for me (Ed) is whether 'Underworld' will once again feature heavily in the film. I am personally a huge fan of the electronic band (mainly thanks to 'Trainspotting') and they certainly set the tone for some of its greatest scenes including this ending scene *spoilers*:

Mortdecai

As we are in the midst of awards season for movies, there seems to be an expectation that every movie that is released at the moment has to be better than the last and by doing so we forget that movies also serve as entertainment. Whilst David Koepp's Mortdecai may not win any Oscars, BAFTAs or Golden Globes, it is a very fun movie and I feel like I need to see a good fun one every once in a while.

Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) is an aristocratic art dealer who has fallen on some financial hard times and is only days away from complete insolvency. After the murder of a painting restorer, he is enlisted by MI5 agent Inspector Martland (Ewan McGregor) to hunt down the killer. So with his trusty manservant Jock (Paul Bettany) in tow, they set off in search of the painting. Meanwhile, Charlie's wife Johanna (Gwyneth Paltrow) begins her own investigation into the missing painting.

One thing I think this movie suffers from is an overcomplicated story. There are parts where I felt as though it was tripping over plot points just to get to some laughs that occasionally fall flat. However, I did find that the characters were suitably well rounded enough to feel them as real people. The movie also takes a lot of time in its transitions to the parts of the world that it takes place. Every time we change city (or even a different part of the same city) we get an animated fly-over of the globe, which I felt worked once, but every time after that was just annoying.

The performances were all fun though. All the actors were playing against type, except for Depp. His usual hammed up performance came in handy here, making himself slightly effete and terribly in love with his freshly grown moustache, which he checks in a mirror of some sort every five seconds. Paltrow has a fun time playing his long suffering wife, although I can't see why she is still together with Mortdecai (and yet at the same time I can). Ewan McGregor's character has been in love with Johanna forever, which I thought was a fun touch to a character whose main job is to give exposition and therefore can be a tiny bit tedious.

The supporting cast is great too. Paul Bettany, normally quite a dramatic actor, plays the rather stiff but reliable manservant Jock and is just a joy in any scene. Jeff Goldblum turns up for a few scenes but the amount of screen time he gets is tantamount to murder. Olivia Munn plays his nymphomaniac daughter but has nothing really to do but be a provocative character.

All in all Mortdecai may not be the best movie out right now, but it surely is a relief from some of the more emotionally invested movies that are out at the moment. I am a huge fan of slapstick and I felt as though this had some fun moments of that.

Son Of A Gun

I don't know how a hero of a movie could be so dumb. Like really dumb. But then again if he wasn't so dumb, the events that cause main plot of this movie wouldn't have happened. Julius Avery's crime thriller is certainly a ride for the audience, but at moments I feel like he dropped the ball.

JR (Brendan Thwaites) is a young crook who is adjusting to his first stint in prison. Eager to prove he is not a weakling, he gets in fights with other inmates and this brings him to the attention of Brendan (Ewan McGregor), a fierce armed robber. Brendan takes JR under his wing and once JR is out of prison, Brendan gets him to do various jobs for him.

The plot of this movie is a little all over the place. Instead of just sticking to one particular part of the criminal life, the movie jumps from a movie about prison life, mobsters and heists. While many of these sequences work well as their own small plots, smashing them together to form a larger narrative doesn't really work. The themes of this movie are also a little too obvious. Throughout the film, games of chess are played by characters who want to prove how smart they are. But the film also labours the point that each character represents a type of chess piece.

The character of JR is intriguing at times, we never learn why he was in prison and his background is hinted at, but never fleshed out. From that we are left to fill in the blanks and give our own theories as to who he actually is. One thing we do know is that he is an idiot and I think he is told this by nearly every character in the film. Thwaites plays him well, although whether he is meant to be a likeable character is a mystery to me.

Unlike the idiot that is JR, McGregor plays the character of Brendan with sharp wit. Brendan can see what is happening around him and the consequences of other's actions with a lot of foresight. McGregor also brings a lot of charm to this violent character, but unlike the other characters, his back story is glaringly lacking.

The character of Tasha (Alicia Vikander) is a bit of a missed opportunity. She only really serves to be a love interest to JR. She hints at a violent and turbulent past in coming to Australia but that is picked up and then dropped almost immediately. She is an Eastern European girl who is bought to Australia with the promise of a passport after she gets a student visa, but ultimately ends up working in a strip club. This was a perfect opportunity to explore the scary and sadly real world of sex trafficking, but it wasn't to be.

The supporting characters only serve to move the plot along and once they have served that purpose, they are unceremoniously dumped. Brendan's partner Sterlo (Matt Nable) is a fun character to watch, but he is killed off soon after he is no longer needed. Also the primary antagonist, Sam (Jacek Koman), is used so negligibly that I didn't know his name for the first half of the movie. Damon Herriman makes a brief cameo as a crazy gun runner in a scene that was a fun break in the tension.

The film's action sequences are rather spectacular. The driving chase scene that takes place is a stand-out sequence, with tense moments and amazing crashes. To see something like that in an independent Australian film is great to see.

Verdict: Despite having some plot problems and the main character being a complete idiot, Son Of A Gun manages to tell an intriguing and fun crime movie.

August: Osage County

Over the years, I have always wanted to see a classic film when it first arrived at cinemas, be it Pulp Fiction, Taxi Driver or Casablanca. With the release of August: Osage County, I feel as though I have had that opportunity. With a fantastic cast, extremely well written script and superb direction, I find it hard to fault this film.

It follows a family from Oklahoma who have come together for the first time in years because their father Beverly (Sam Shepard) has gone missing. Their mother, Violet (Meryl Streep), is an abrasive woman who is addicted to prescription medication. The three daughters, Barbara, Ivy and Karen (Julia Roberts, Julianne Nicholson and Juliette Lewis, respectively), each with their own problems, come together to try and comfort their mother.

For a film with a lot going on in terms of story and sub-plots, everything is presented quite clearly and this comes down to Tracy Letts' brilliant script (he also wrote the award-winning play on which the film is based). It's never hard to keep track of everyone's story and every plot element is resolved without being dismissed too quickly.

John Wells direction is also very evocative. He brings out stellar performances from his entire cast and shoots each scene in an extremely planned way. One of the major scenes in the film revolves around a family dinner and it is shot in such a way that the audience is gripped for the entire duration.

The two standout performances come from both Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. Streep is amazingly witty, yet at the same time sharp-tounged, as the matriarch of the family. It is definitely a standout role for her in her recent career (even though her recent career has been full of those). Julia Roberts has come a long way from the roles that she played early on (both Runaway Bride and Pretty Woman were terrible in my book). She is excellent as a long suffering daughter who just wants to be done with her family.

Verdict: A fantastic family drama that is surprisingly funny. Stellar performances from both Streep and Roberts.