My Psychopharmacologist and I

Side Effects

*** out of ****

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Starring: Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Vinessa Shaw

Running Time: 106 minutes

Steven Soderbergh’s supposed swan song (at least, on the big screen) is a thriller with many moods and faces, as well as a mystery full of misery. Like many of the director’s previous efforts, Side Effects is full of liars and schemers, although it is not always clear who is doing the lying and scheming.

It’s a solid film to exit with, although not a spectacular one, since Side Effects is more notable for its twisty screenplay. The presence of a directorial master behind the camera is secondary to the characterization and story structure.

The psychopharmacological drama details the unpredictable relationship between Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) and her psychiatrist, Jonathan Banks (Jude Law). With a perpetually glazed-over expression, Emily is deeply unhappy. Her husband Martin (Channing Tatum) returns from prison for an insider-trading sentence, but his presence does little to enliven her.

After an apparent suicide attempt, Banks takes Emily under his wing and starts prescribing her antidepressants to try to help her “live through chemistry,” as he calls it. Banks puts Emily on an experimental new drug, Ablixa, to mend her sunken state.

However, Emily commits a crime while sleepwalking, a potential result of the drug. As she awaits trial, her memory is foggy, without any recollection of criminal intent. The fingers start pointing at Banks, criticizing him for neglectful practice, which harms the doctor’s professional and personal life.

The screenplay from Scott Z. Burns (Contagion) is two-pronged, rotating from Emily’s anxious perspective in the first third to Banks’ desperation, as his patient’s enigmatic actions put his career in jeopardy. Characters often quote William Styron’s memoir of depression, Darkness Visible. Emily describes it her melancholy as “a poisonous fog bank rolling in,” and Mara is unflinching in the role.

Thin and faint, Mara internalizes her character’s misery and effectively downplays the hysteria, letting external elements speak for Emily’s mental commotion. Soderbergh disorients the audience to adopt Emily’s view by blurring or blackening small details in many of her scenes, reflecting the shrouds of mystery and darkness in her life.

Meanwhile, Thomas Newman’s piercing, icy score brings us to the brink of Emily’s delicate, drug-addled paralysis. The opening shot of the film, zooming and tightening on a nondescript New York apartment, is a direct homage to Psycho, another mystery with a mentally imbalanced character with mysterious motives.

Mara and Law are quietly powerful, although the latter actor eventually gets the more interesting character arc as the film shifts focus to his struggle to maintain a balance between work and ethics.

As Side Effects moves toward its curvy final act, it becomes exposition-heavy, with Burns’ script setting up some of the turning points unnaturally. The writing is smart until some of the film’s contrivances shine though. A sensuous psychiatrist played by Catherine Zeta-Jones is also thinly conceived, almost inconsequential until the rote ending.

Side Effects is an involving mystery and a well-acted character drama, despite its unwieldy final minutes. As the finale to an excellent director’s eclectic career, it leaves a bit to be desired. On its own, though, it’s a fine little thriller.

2012 Academy Awards: And The Oscar Goes To…

Many complain that the Academy Awards, which happen at the end of the annual awards season, is too often a predictable affair. This year, however, has seen the tide change for many of the presumed front-runners since the nominations were announced on Jan. 10.

Then, Lincoln was the Best Picture frontrunner, Jessica Chastain had the Best Actress race sewn up for her buzzy role in the even buzzier Zero Dark Thirty, and esteemed playwright Tony Kushner was surging ahead as a likely winner for his verbose Lincoln screenplay, full of 19th-century rabble-rousing.

Not anymore, it seems.

Yes, a few categories are locked, such as Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress. But many of the categories’ fates seem as unpredictable as knowing which celebrity targets host Seth MacFarlane will roast (lightly) on Sunday evening.

Here are my picks for who will win at the 85th annual Academy Awards, followed by who could spoil the party and who should be victorious.

Best Picture

Who Will Win: Argo

Who Could Win: Lincoln

Who Should Win: Amour

It's a box-office hit and crowd-pleaser, a period piece with links to contemporary political affairs and a movie about the movies (sort of). In addition, Ben Affleck has won so many prizes that Academy voters will be guilty they snubbed him accidentally for the directing category and hand him (as well as George Clooney and Grant Heslov) an Oscar for producing. However, Argo is not the obvious choice: it has five fewer nods than Lincoln, a possible although unlikely spoiler.

Best Director

Who Will Win: Steven Spielberg, Lincoln

Who Could Win: David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Who Should Win: Michael Haneke, Amour

With David O. Russell’s adapted screenplay getting much praise but little potential to win in a crowded category, he could sneak up and upset. But, directors rarely win for comedy. Lee has won twice before, but Life of Pi has no acting nominations, which dampen his chances considerably. Lincoln, meanwhile, boasts impressive performances and assured direction, and this could make it three directing Oscars for industry titan Spielberg, after Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.

Best Actor

Who Will Win: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Who Could Win: Um… I guess all the people Day-Lewis will thank in his speech are winners, in a metaphorical sort of way.

Who Should Win: Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

If Daniel Day-Lewis does not pick up an Oscar for his stellar turn as the 16th President of the United States, I will gladly give my left foot. If he falters to pick up this luxurious trophy, I assure you that there will be blood. I mean, in the name of the father, if Day-Lewis does not win… OK, you get the idea.

Best Actress

Who Will Win: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Who Could Win: Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

Who Should Win: Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

On Sunday, the same day that the Academy Awards turns 85, Emmanuelle Riva will turn 86. A golden statue would be quite the birthday present. Although Riva has gotten much amour for her remarkable performance and is a sleeper pick for the award, she did not score a Screen Actors Guild nomination. Since the actors’ guild is often an indicator of who picks up an Academy Award, this should put Lawrence (who has plowed through awards’ season the same way Katniss Everdeen does in The Hunger Games) the victor.

Best Supporting Actor

Who Will Win: Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

Who Could Win: Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook

Who Should Win: Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master

This is one of the toughest categories to call, since the three actors above (along with Christoph Waltz, whose chances weaken due to the lack of a SAG nomination) have each racked up wins this awards season. All of the nominees have won before, so there is little hope for a sentimental favourite to pull through (a la Adrien Brody, who won Best Actor for The Pianist against four past winners in 2003). That leaves it a two-man race between De Niro, who has not won since 1981, and Jones, who has not won since 1994. Jones won the SAG, which is a good indicator of who will take home the gold on Sunday.

Best Supporting Actress

Who Will Win: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Who Could Win: Sally Field, Lincoln (but it’s a real long shot)

Who Should Win: Amy Adams, The Master

Sure, the Academy likes Sally Field (they really, really like her) and she would be a stronger contender in a different year. But Anne Hathaway’s stellar performance was one of the only high points of a lackluster Les Miserables, and her awards-season sweepstakes will continue here.

The Rest of the Bests:

Best Original Screenplay – Michael Haneke, Amour

Best Adapted Screenplay – Chris Terrio, Argo

Best Animated Feature Film – Wreck-it Ralph (Rich Moore)

Best Animated Short Film – "Paperman" (John Kahrs)

Best Documentary Feature – Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn)

Best Documentary Short Subject – "Open Heart" (Kief Davidson and Cori Shepherd Stern

Best Foreign-Language Film – Amour (Austria)

Best Live-Action Short Film – "Death of a Shadow" (Tom Van Avermaet and Ellen De Waele)

Best Original Score – Life of Pi (Mychael Danna)

Best Original Song – “Skyfall” from Skyfall (Music and Lyric by Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth)

Best Cinematography – Life of Pi (Claudio Miranda)

Best Costume Design – Anna Karenina (Jacqueline Durran)

Best Film Editing – Argo (William Goldenberg)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling – Les Miserables (Lisa Westcott and Julie Dartnell)

Best Production Design – Anna Karenina (Sarah Greenwood (Production Design); Katie Spencer (Set Decoration))

Best Sound Editing – Skyfall (Per Hallberg and Karen Baker Landers)

Best Sound Mixing – Les Miserables (Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson and Simon Hayes)

Best Visual Effects – Life of Pi (Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott)

The Piano Teachers

Amour

**** out of ****

Directed by: Michael Haneke

Starring: Emmanuelle Riva, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Isabelle Huppert, Alexandre Tharaud and William Shimell

Running time: 127 minutes

By the window of the den in Anne and Georges’ Paris apartment rests a black piano. Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) and Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) are retired piano teachers in their eighties who rarely dabble in musical exercise anymore. However, even with a whole life together under their belt, a sharp, discordant minor note attempts to cripple their harmonious marriage.

Amour, the latest film from Austrian auteur Michael Haneke, was 2012’s most celebrated film – and rightfully so. It won the Palme D’or at Cannes (Haneke’s second in four festivals) and is a shoe-in for the Foreign Language Film Oscar in a couple of weeks.

Haneke is a more macabre “master of suspense” than Hitchcock, his films notable for their dark themes (The White Ribbon), explorations of violence (Funny Games) and enigmatic endings (Cache). Amour continues all three of these trends but is also the director’s most humanist and emotionally devastating effort yet.

One lovely morning, the couple engages in small talk over breakfast when Anne suddenly freezes. Georges tries to break her out of a lifeless stare during this lapse, which turns out to be a stroke.

After a surgery goes wrong, she becomes paralyzed on her right side. Georges requests that she stay in the hospital to have constant medical supervision. She refuses and makes him promise, begrudgingly, to keep her at home. She declares stubbornly that she “won’t fall to pieces” by staying confined to the apartment, much to the chagrin of Georges and her daughter, Eva (Isabelle Huppert).

Nevertheless, Anne’s health quickly deteriorates. Georges becomes increasingly distraught at coping with his wife’s resistance to hospital care. Although their bond is still as strong as ivory, he cannot stand to hear that she is thinking of death. “You inflict nothing on me,” he reassures her. But a face more used to vitality shrinks to a defeated sullenness, as their love is further tested.

Haneke is a precise director known, beyond his film’s bleaker themes, for staying detached from the characters, observing their crises from a distance. Regardless of the sterility that demands the audience be patient with his stylistic choices – he frequently shoots scenes in one or two long takes – Amour is his most absorbing film to date. His uninterrupted takes build suspense, as does the lack of any musical score, save for a few brief piano refrains.

The two actors at the centre are superb. Both are best known for esteemed careers in French cinema: Riva broke through in Jean Resnais’ haunting Hiroshima, Mon Amour, while Trintignant’s role in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist is equally striking.

Riva is spellbinding as the defiant Anne, whose brusque attitude turns fragile when her speech begins deteriorating, reducing her livelihood to bellowing aches that echo through the apartment.

Trintignant’s Georges, the pained suitor trying to find a way to keep control of himself as his wife becomes more sick, is haunted by the finality of time. During a faintly lit scene where Anne is asleep, Georges listens intently to her breathing, aware that he may soon never listen to these whispered inhalations for much longer.

The film’s intimate scale does not dilute the extraordinary power of the performances, but only heightens the poignancy of the characters’ love. Amour is an arresting look at the demands of love that does something unparalleled: it warms your heart and breaks it at the same time. 

The Grateful Dead

Warm Bodies

*** out of ****

Directed by: Jonathan Levine

Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Rob Corddry, Analeigh Tipton and John Malkovich

Running time: 97 minutes

More attuned to the biting humour of Chuck Palahniuk’s satires than to Stephenie Meyer’s narcoleptic revisionist creature romances, Warm Bodies is a mostly successful zom-rom-com that gets the heart right even though its PG-13 rating ensures that it does not unleash a lot of blood.

The film is adapted from a novel by Isaac Marion that itself gleans much of its structure and characterization from Romeo and Juliet. Except, here, Romeo is a zombie who just goes by his first initial, the rest of his name unbeknownst to him.

With bad posture, glazed eyes and a veiny neck, R (Nicholas Hoult) lives in an abandoned airplane in the part of town overrun by zombies, eight years after a mysterious plague infects much of American society. His daily routine includes grunt-filled conversations with M (his Mercutio, the comic relief appropriately played by Rob Corddry) and heading out in packs to feast on human brains.

On the other side of a giant dividing wall is Julie (Teresa Palmer, with a more full-bodied range than her doppelganger Kristen Stewart). She travels with a pack of her human companions to hunt zombies. Her father is an army general, played by John Malkovich, who wants the zombie scum eliminated so that the human contingent can rebuild the ‘dead zone.’

On one excursion, Julie and her team confront R and his undead crew. R feasts on the brains of her boyfriend, Perry (another half-clever Shakespearean allusion played by Dave Franco). During his meal, he digests memories of Perry’s relationship with Julie, the visions presented in saturated colours. Awestruck by their romance, R’s heart begins to get warmer.

When he takes Julie captive, he vies to create a compatible friendship between human and zombie. Julie soon develops a convenient level of Stockholm Syndrome and starts to become curious about the corpse’s chivalry.

R’s sarcastic, although comatose voice-over helps the audience submerge into his conflicted state: his hunger dissipates as he develops feelings for Julie although he has to feel the rejection of his romantic partner early on.

The modifications that Julie makes to resemble a zombie get a few chuckles, although the film earns more of its power from the poignancy of Hoult and Palmer’s performances. The burgeoning young actors treat the subject matter with seriousness but also just the right smidgen of incredulity, to ensure Warm Bodies doesn’t become unsavoury melodrama (I’m looking at you, Twilight and facsimiles thereof).

Jonathan Levine’s film does not have a wasted moment, condensing the history of an endemic so that the audience knows just enough to buy into the underpopulated landscapes. Meanwhile, the decaying set design (from Martin Whist, who also worked on Cloverfield) is impressive enough that the film distinguishes itself from other post-apocalyptic universes.

Although Warm Bodies lacks the gore and grit that enthusiastic fans of undead lore probably hope for, the film works superbly due to strong performances by the romantic leads and the sly screenplay. Its obvious dues to Shakespeare aside – it even has a balcony scene – the film’s universe isn’t skimmed over, the characters are appealing and the stakes are real. Rarely have the undead seemed so emotionally viable.

Beauty and the Bull

Rust and Bone

** out of ****

Directed by: Jacques Audiard

Starring: Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts, Armand Verdue and Celine Sellette

Running time: 126 minutes

Witnessing a relationship where the couple shows few signs of compatibility is not just painful in real life, but also in the movies. The main problem with Rust and Bone, the latest film from French writer/director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet), is how often the female lead is maligned by both the male love interest and the script.

Audiard and co-writer Thomas Bidegain adapt the film from two short stories by Canadian writer and amateur boxer Craig Davidson. The director tries to merge Davidson’s stories together and find common ground between their protagonists – played by the beautiful Marion Cotillard and the beefy Matthias Schoenaerts – but these opposites do not attract or fit together convincingly.

Schoenaerts is Ali, a broke Parisian and petty thief taking care of his five-year-old son. At the film’s start, the duo scrounges for leftover lunch food on a train. Ali ends up getting a job as a bouncer at a throbbing Côte d'Azur nightclub. One night, he breaks up a brawl involving a fragile French girl, Stephanie (Cotillard), and decides to drive her home. She is a Marineland orca trainer with a bruised home life.

Those wounds seem minimal after a disaster at the stage show where Stephanie performs, when a killer whale pounces on the set and it collapses. A haunting, nearly soundless underwater shot shows Stephanie floating with her two legs nearly ripped apart. Her legs are later removed, subjecting Stephanie to a wheelchair in her dim apartment. She calls Ali for support and the two start to bond.

The film’s title comes from a description in one of Davidson’s stories about the taste a fighter feels when he is punched in the mouth. It relates to Ali, who participates in grueling mano-a-mano brawls with other men in the countryside to pay off his debts. The title, however, can also refer to the characters: the rust signifies Stephanie’s deterioration, while the bone refers to Ali’s physicality.

Schoenaerts is a talented actor trapped inside a thin character. He is a large screen presence, with gentle eyes and a fighter’s grip, and an intensity in his face that epitomizes his character’s struggle. 

Ali is the furthest thing from a generous and responsible man, though: he hits his kid, takes advantage of his co-workers (in a mired subplot that could have been cut), and eventually looks at Stephanie as a lover instead of offering her the companionship she direly needs.

This deeply flawed characterization can only work if Ali transforms into a responsible character by the end. However, his changes are minor. He is merely a sensitive thug who gets a release through carnal pleasures and is often unfazed by Stephanie’s disability.

Stephanie and Ali are both battered characters – her physically and him financially – trying to regain control over their lives. The climax of the film, which uses a frightening although predictably set-up accident scene to bring them together, wraps up their rocky relationship too quickly, betraying the rougher contrasts in characterization that came earlier.

Audiard mistakenly focuses the film on the almost cartoonishly inept Ali instead of Stephanie, since the best scenes in Rust and Bone belong to Cotillard, a full-bodied performer who distracts from her onscreen disability (the legs are convincingly eliminated with CGI). As she sits in her apartment, alone, overlooking the sparkling waters of the sea, she longs for a life without pain. Cotillard brings out this dreariness without uttering a word.

The film’s technical qualities are top-notch, but can only service Rust and Bone so much. Alexandre Desplat’s score simmers underneath the beaten characters, with minor keys and horns addressing their solitude. 

Meanwhile, two buoyantly optimistic pop songs – “Love Shack” by the B-52s and Katy Perry’s “Firework” – track Stephanie’s remedial process. She wheels around her tiny apartment to the beats of the former tune, then performs her aquatic show routine (done to “Firework”) as her body regains its composure.

In a late scene in the film, Stephanie returns to the aquarium and comes face-to-face with the giant killer whale that mangled her, a pane of glass separating the two. The camera lingers on Stephanie’s hand as it touches the glass. The orca swims right to her. 

It is a captivating moment, as Stephanie wrestles with venturing back into a world of potential danger and peril. The beast that submerged her underneath and tore her body apart could, in this circumstance, be a symbol for Ali.

The characters in the film are tough and headstrong, but the writing fails to make one believe that a relationship between these damaged souls can work. It is hard to become engaged in a romance when we cannot root for the lopsided relationship at the centre.