Movies Worth Hunting For

Never Let Me Go

Buried

Both films: ***1/2 out of ****

This year’s fall movie schedule is already on pace to be one of the finest on record, which bodes well for those still underwhelmed by a mostly recycled collection of offerings this summer. Unfortunately, with such a variety of film festival favourites and serious award-season contenders hitting theatres each week, some are bound to get lost in the shuffle.

May I focus your attention on two superb films that are slowly withering away at the box office: Mark Romanek’s poignant sci-fi romance Never Let Me Go, and Rodrigo Cortes’ chilling suspense-thriller Buried.

Mark Romanek is no stranger to crafting haunting works about people glancing back at their lives. His most revered accomplishment in his two decades of music video and commercial work is for directing the heart-wrenching video for Johnny Cash’s “Hurt,” which became the rock icon’s epitaph. In his latest film, Never Let Me Go, he achieves a work that’s just as emotionally devastating, this time covering what Time Magazine named “The Best Book of the Decade.”

The film centers on another character looking back at their younger days – except this time our central figure is barely out of school. Her name is Kathy (Carey Mulligan) and she evokes memories of her days as a young student at Hailsham Academy, her friendships with the foolish, unstable Tommy (Andrew Garfield) and the selfish, cunning Ruth (Keira Knightley), and the love triangle that jeopardized this relationship.

Classes at Hailsham are not what we’d typically find at a proper boarding school setting, but there’s a reason I’m not spilling any details as to why. Here’s a hint: Never Let Me Go is a film about experiencing real pain in a largely manufactured life.

The curt innocence of pubescent childhood is shown delicately, but there is always an underlying notion of uncertainty in the memories from Hailsham. As the characters become young adults, the ordered lifestyles and feelings of security drift away. These souls end up lost and confused. All three main actors (Knightley and Mulligan, especially) deserve acclaim for their nuanced comings-of-age.

Ishiguro, a novelist best known for The Remains of the Day, is notable for taking the sterility and grace of a proper, English novel and instilling a dreary resignation to murk up the story and frustrate the characters. Romanek stays true to Ishiguro’s insistence on order (the scenes at Hailsham are shot quite rigidly) and drains the film’s second half of warm colours to reflect the characters' woe.

You will want the conditions to improve for these tortured souls as much as the characters themselves. But be prepared: Never Let Me Go might be the saddest film of the year, a shattering depiction of love, betrayal and angst. The film packs an emotional wallop that will be hard to shake; simply, it does just what the title says.

On the other end of the spectrum is quite a different film, albeit one that’s just as gripping and grueling as Romanek’s adaptation. It’s called Buried, it's an ode to Hitchcock, and it has a simple premise: an American contractor named Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) has been sent to Iraq. After his convoy is ambushed, he blacks out and awakens in complete darkness, buried alive in a tiny coffin.

With just a Zippo and Blackberry at his disposal, Paul has to figure out how to be rescued from the containment as oxygen starts to slip away. To make this life-and-death scenario even worse, he must comply with a terrorist demand, a ransom of $5 million.

The film restricts the narration to the mere details Conroy figures out from his phone calls. As we never seep away from the coffin, we’re left with the same sense of mystery and frustration that Paul is nearly suffocated with.

Reynolds astutely fulfills an exhaustive (but never exhausting) acting exercise. The film demands Mr. Scarlett Johansson to extend his range in minimal space, and he is exceptional – going from a panicked, desperate psyche when speaking with the sources on the ground to a tender anguish as he tries to reach the family he may never see again. The film could have been tough to stomach had Reynolds’ layered performance not supplied some much needed air.

Director Rodrigo Cortes also pulls off a stunning number of inventive camera angles – the most impressive cinematography of any film this year. He makes the space seem wider in one moment and then even tighter in the next, and uses various tricks to help the audience adapt to the space. Cortes expertly uses a limited set of light as well, able to emit a glow large enough to show what is going on, while leaving the rest of the atmosphere engulfed in darkness.

Suspense-thrillers rarely think outside the box anymore, but Buried is one that keeps its audience mesmerized without going further than inside one. It’s an intense and palpably exciting hour-and-a-half that introduces us to one new talent (Cortes) while introducing us to the range that a semi-new talent can possess when given the right circumstances (Reynolds).

Doc on Failing Education Gets a Passing Grade

Waiting for 'Superman'

*** out of ****

Directed by: Davis Guggenheim

Running time: 110 minutes

If I were to mark this hot-topic doc from Oscar-winner Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth), it would get a solid B. The film, an analysis of the problems and pitfalls that plague the American public school system, is insightful, engaging, and at times, deeply disturbing.

In the film’s funniest moment, Guggenheim reveals that American students rank last in math and science skills. When asked to rank their skills, however, these students put themselves ahead of 30 other developed countries.

So, why are these children lagging so far behind? Guggenheim points out that it has to do with the teachers and the powerful unions that protect them. Once a union teacher is granted tenure just a few years into their career, they are ensured of keeping this position for life. And, chances are, with this near guarantee of job security (the firing process for an educator is so lengthy and difficult to justify on the school’s part that it rarely ever happens), these teachers simply stay put.

In a cheeky animated sequence, Guggenheim introduces the “dance of the lemons.” When a teacher at an upper-level school doesn’t meet its expectations, they are not fired; rather, they are waltzed out and employed at a lower-tier school. It’s as if one school takes out the trash and the slightly worse one picks it up and rummages through it – which can explain why schools in poorer areas have the majority of their students struggling to reach their expected grade level.

Education reform’s not the easiest thing to push for, either. Take Michelle Rhee, a public school chancellor for Washington D.C. who fired dozens of principals and hundreds of underperforming teachers while pushing merit pay for higher-quality instructors. Her reasons may have been justified, but the unions were disgusted by these “radical” reforms.

In the last shot of Rhee, she looks at the Capitol Building in her rearview mirror, and (in voice-over) mentions how so much drama in the system revolves around the adults, that it’s easy to forget about the children suffering from the crippled state of the education.

Thankfully, ‘Superman’ doesn’t forget about the little guys. Throughout the film, Guggenheim follows the path of five children and their families – from many ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses. Each of them decides to enter an American charter school, a learning-intensive facility with highly qualified, better paid instructors.

Unfortunately, thousands of families await a stop in these chapels of education, and the centres can only accept a select few. The positions are chosen by a lottery – the ones the families featured in the documentary will partake in at the film’s end. Those who make it into these schools are heavily favoured to make it into college. Those who don’t will be scrambling to make ends meet, since the alarming high school dropout rate in the United States is unlikely to subside.

When the future of your child is predicated by mere luck, you’ve got a system that’s out of control.

Guggenheim tackles a lot of issues in just under two hours; unfortunately, the film doesn’t cover some essential points and that is its kryptonite. It’s not just the teachers and the unions who forecast trouble for schoolchildren. Other factors, from the home life and the parents’ involvement in their children to problems with the curriculum to the lack of motivation most kids have to succeed at school, are key detriments to many students across the United States.

The reason that hundreds of thousands of students drop out of school each year is not entirely the teacher’s fault, folks. In fact, a good teacher is the real ‘Superman’ many American schoolchildren and their families are waiting for. But even though Guggenheim’s documentary is not as comprehensive as one would expect for such a sprawling issue, it is certainly a gripping, galvanizing, important film.

[Note: Michelle Rhee, a key figure in the film who was mentioned in the review, just resigned this past week from her post as schools chancellor in Washington D.C.]

Put the Right Ones Out

Hollywood doesn’t like the expression, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it." You see, the studio honchos that control the "dream factory" have come to realize that while originality is sacred, notoriety is one of the most valuable assets a film property can have.

This has led to both good news and unfortunate tales from this industry. On the happy side, Hollywood has recently taken doomed franchises – Star Trek, Batman and 007, to name a few – and have “rebooted” these popular culture staples. These updates are fresh, exciting, terrifically entertaining, and feature awards-caliber writing and performances.

On the flip-side, we have a studio system acting half out of desperation, and half out of what can only be described as “cinematic amnesia.”

Recently, many major studios are taking familiar properties and cashing in on their rehashed imaginings. In 2010 alone, we’ve seen an updated Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans, Karate Kid, Robin Hood, The Wolfman, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Don’t expect year-end accolades for any of these pictures.

The “cinematic amnesia” seeps in not just when executives start putting their productions on an assembly line (the recent Alice in Wonderland smash has now spawned such rebooted offspring as Snow White and Cinderella) but when recent films – those that came out within the last decade – are being turned into new franchises. And those are bound to make a profit, right?

If all goes according to Hollywood’s master-plan, here is what you can expect to hit multiplexes over the next few years:

-Spider-Man, starring The Social Network’s Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker and Easy A’s Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, to be directed by (500) Days of Summer’s Marc Webb (here come the puns, here come the puns…)

-Superman, from director/slow-motion expert Zack Snyder (300). It’s only been four years since Bryan Singer took the reins, people. And speaking of Bryan Singer…

-…X-Men: First Class, an origin tale about those Marvel-ous mutants, starring James McAvoy as Xavier and Michael Fassbender as Magneto. At least they have Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) in the director's chair.

And that’s just the superhero genre, folks! Is there anybody out there eager for an Arthur remake that replaces Dudley Moore with Russell Brand? Or a live-action version of Akira? How about cult hit The Warriors? The sci-fi classic Alien? Red Dawn? Footloose? Getting the picture?

To be fair, there have been some excellent remakes in recent memory. Ocean’s Eleven was one of last decade’s most satisfying treats, with one of the smoothest screenplays ever sculpted. Meanwhile, The Departed, based on an excellent Hong Kong thriller, took home the Best Picture Academy Award in 2007. James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma also helped to revive the Western genre in style (which makes the Coen Brothers’ take on True Grit, due out December 25, even more enticing).

Unfortunately, it seems as if everything is becoming, as the narrator in Fight Club prophesied, “A copy of a copy of a copy.”

Last week, I went to see Matt Reeves’ American remake of the Swedish vampire love story Let the Right One In (the new version, in theatres now, is titled Let Me In). When excellent film-festival buzz and strong reviews suggested that this version had surpassed the lofty expectations set by the original - one that came out in North America only 23 months ago - I decided to check it out.

It turns out that Let Me In wasn’t all that bad – just annoyingly unnecessary. It was almost the same film as the one that inspired it, just with blander performances, little atmosphere, less soul and no point.

So I plead with you: try your best to avoid these “reimaginings.” Save a few choice updates that I mentioned earlier, if we all pay our cinema fare to films that we saw just a few seasons ago or that remind us of the titles stashed on our shelves at home, we're in for a dismal future in cinema. Monotony may be nice for business. But for art, it is unacceptable.

If Hollywood only had the brain, the heart and the nerve to capitalize on taking risks… I mean, many of us (Warner Bros. included) are still recovering from the whirlwind that was Inception. But there’s no use alluding to The Wizard of Oz, folks. Hollywood’s planning on remaking that one, too.

What's On My Mind?

The Social Network

**** out of ****

Directed by: David Fincher

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer and Max Minghella

Running time: 121 minutes

People who label The Social Network as “the Facebook movie” miss the point. It’s called The Social Network because it charts the pursuit of a lonely student as he navigates toward the pantheon of social life, and not because Facebook, the phenomenon he would eventually create, is a social networking website.

Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) is a miserable Harvard undergraduate who desires to be recognized by the elite, all-exclusive clubs that may lead him to a more fulfilled life. To get attention, he launches a small website called “TheFacebook.”

What makes the film so darkly ironic is that Zuckerberg is anti-social. His repugnant personality and high-strung ego is nearly intolerable. In the first scene of the film, his girlfriend leaves him and he responds by insulting her to an online audience. Later, he cunningly manipulates his friends and associates, moving from a Harvard dweeb status to that of the world-wide-web prophet we know him as today.

It’s a riveting and supremely entertaining, but ultimately heartbreaking journey, chronicled with flair and wit by a dream team comprising of writer Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher.

The films jumps back and forth between the events surrounding the founding of Facebook and the subsequent legal proceedings. Zuckerberg is being sued by Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), his partner and best friend who was Facebook’s original CFO. He also must deal with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer), identical twins who proposed the idea of an online network for Harvard students to Zuckerberg mere months before Facebook launched.

The Social Network’s wry, rapid-fire script comes from Sorkin – the king of writing smart, cocksure characters rambling on in smart, cocksure manners – and it’s adapted from an equally breathless non-fiction bestseller, Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires.

Like capable journalists, Sorkin and Fincher present a legal issue and then flash back to when the problem originated, letting the audience observe the scenario and figure out Zuckerberg’s level of guilt or innocence on their own.

Director David Fincher orchestrates the onscreen action with ease. By upping the ante on the characters' conflicts while Facebook catapults at a similarly rapid pace, the film builds toward a gut-wrenching climax.

As Zuckerberg, Eisenberg gives the finest performance any actor has given so far this year. It’s a cold, malignant character but Eisenberg instills him with such an inert pride and intelligence that we admire his genius even as we despise his actions. His misery and drive is reflected in Trent Reznor’s rumbling, moody, electric score.

You know a performance works when one can be fascinated with simply watching the character think. We're endlessly fascinated with what ideas, betrayals, defenses and calculations Zuckerberg can be pondering. His portrayal of a genius is simply genius.

As Saverin, the noble friend who regrettably got the short end of the site, Andrew Garfield is heartbreaking. You can think of him as the Leland to Eisenberg’s Kane. Justin Timberlake is also excellent as the shamelessly slick Sean Parker, the ex-founder of Napster who became Zuckerberg’s mentor.

Calling The Social Network “the Facebook movie” is an injustice. Few films cut to the bone of societal decay with such verve, wit and insight. How so? Zuckerberg is not just the mastermind behind the site that’s keeping us connected with our friends. In the process of getting Facebook the worldwide notoriety it has today, he distanced himself from every friend he had. Isn't this a dark irony that situates itself perfectly within our tech-savvy times?

This film is a blistering, sad and brilliant tragedy. How many “pokes” will it take to get the Academy to notice that?