The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011)

A man forced to do some soul-searching and learn to single-parent two children while his wife lies in a terminal coma is potentially the essence of a maelstrom of schmaltz, and it is really tempting fate to have him played by George Clooney, who one is hard pushed to see as a victim, place a matter of millions in his pocket for material reassurance and then make Hawaii the setting.
But thankfully this is a film with Alexander Payne at the wheel. It isn't out of place at all in his panoply alongside Election, About Schmidt and Sideways, all of which accommodate lightness without bruising the inherent pathos. Scenes made of stock ingredients convey uncommon complexity and yet do not bludgeon the audience with the message, and the numerous traps through which films like this normally fall into proselytising or tweeness are deftly sidestepped. Yes, there are a few forced metaphors and pat elisions present too, but it is a real strength that the Clooney here is not the smirking charmer, the grizzled leader or the earnest frowner, but just a rather uncertain and small man who doesn't have all the answers or indeed a firm moral compass, and thereby turns in his most mature performance so far. I can't wait to see what Payne has done with Bruce Dern in Nebraska.

7/10

Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012)

Given the ongoing political friction between the U.S. and Iran, the decision of Affleck to tackle part of the events of the hostage crisis that took place in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution may be seen either as bold or foolhardy. It is fine that an actor whose image took a merciless and justified battering in the period which included calamities such as Pearl Harbor or Gigli did not lie down and curl up, but for all the plaudits this piece garnered at the Oscars, I remain unconvinced of his directorial merits.
The story is basically a tweaked version of a rescue attempt of six stranded diplomats by a CIA operatives involving him flying in to disguise them as fake filmmakers. It functions fine as light entertainment with a few hairy moments, and this is pretty much the crux of the problem. There is chipper banter between the hero's Hollywood collaborators, all the Iranians are furiously suspicious with bulging eyes and a completely fabricated chase finale is tagged on too, in an apparent belief that the audiences will simply not have an appetite for the less dramatic real story. It may be well-made and even well-intentioned, but it is still commercially compromised tosh nevertheless.

5/10

Now You See Me (Louis Leterrier, 2013)

Magicians in movies will always prove popular, as audiences love to be bamboozled and a film will be able to do that to double the effect with cuts, reverses and FX. This, however, reduces the efficacy of the illusions on show as we are aware that everything can be cheated, without any real ingenuity. There are decent movies centered around magicians and their craft, but Now You See Me is not one of them. Four illusionists robbing banks is an amusing idea, and it diverts for a while, but providing explanations for some of the tricks while pulling off completely unfeasible ones which would only work with a filmic toolkit at the same time is just irritating. The denouement is also very worn out. Now you'll see it.

4/10

Das Schloß (Michael Haneke, 1997)

Haneke's TV adaptation of Kafka's unfinished novel The Castle is in some ways the happy marriage of two unhappy artists, the Austrian director having demonstrated many of the same preoccupations throughout his career as the Austro-Hungarian writer did: deep pessimism at man's random inhumanity to man, the oppressive power of unquestioned orthodoxy and a sense of the absurdity of the world. So the end result of the union feels at once Kafka's voice made celluloid and Haneke's hand on the tiller, with no conflict between the two presences. Whether it works as a whole is quite another matter, and the conclusion has to be that it doesn't.
The protagonist is Ulrich Mühe, who arrives in a snowbound town, expecting to take up a position as a land surveyor, and instead finds himself trapped by unfathomable levels of bureaucracy and societal pettiness. The actor is not at fault, but this time the everyman does not speak to us enough: his actions are frequently as irrational or spiteful as everyone else's, something that Josef K. in the closely akin The Trial was not prone to. It reduces the power of our indignation at the ludicrous system portrayed when everyone on screen is acting sans marbles. And then, after several hours of going around in circles, the film ends midway through a scene because that's where the novel was cut short, which does rather make you wonder what the point of the exercise was. It never is an easy ride with Haneke, but this just feels wilful.

5/10

Le Week-End (Roger Michell, 2013)

The Notting Hill director takes on a Hanif Kureishi screenplay, so the expected synthesis might be middle-class feelgood fare with a maladroit political subtext struggling to get through the gloop. This is partially indeed the case, with the story of a middle-aged couple on a weekender trip to Paris, trying to rekindle their relationship. It's initially not much more than a cosy travelogue, with Kureishi's contribution seeming to be to make the wife erratically vitriolic in the middle of the bonhomie. The film's saving graces are the enduring appeal of Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan as the couple, and rather surprisingly the appearance of Jeff Goldblum in a prolonged cameo in one of his turns as a boggle-eyed motormouth, which is always uncomfortably close to what you suspect the actor actually is. Here, however, it works to bring our sympathies back on the side of the somewhat feckless pair as there's no doubt that whatever delusions they have, they're small potatoes compared to those of their pontificating friend.

6/10

The Host (Andrew Niccol, 2013)

It seems an awfully long time since Niccol appeared bearing impressive offerings in the shape of Gattaca and The Truman Show, although taking on board an adaptation of another supernatural potboiler from the writer of Twilight is hardly any way to get your career back on track. Saoirse Ronan squeaks and gawps with wonder in her eyes more annoyingly than ever as the heroine, who, like most of mankind, is now occupied by an alien lifeform, though it goes without saying that she gets the one benign invader out of the lot of them. The concept is not without promise, but the combination of trite ponderings and duff casting makes the end product complete twaddle from start to finish.

3/10

Dead Man Down (Niels Arden Oplev, 2013)

The star of the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is reunited with that film's director, having earned the right to do Hollywood through its success, but this is much less interesting fare. Noomi Rapace is a woman disfigured in a car accident who discovers that her neighbour is a contract killer and threatens to expose him so that he'll get rid of the man who caused her injury. As the hitman is Colin Farrell, we are on well-trodden ground and naturally he is a brooding piece of damaged goods too, with his own revenge mission. An eventual falling for each other is of course on the cards, but not before the script has rather tiresomely hopped between extreme violence and musings on dealing with loss for two long hours.

4/10