by Oscar O’Sullivan

Monday – Hannah Takes the Stairs

Mumblecore is a genre identifier that sends shivers down my spine. When I hear it, one word comes to mind, that being cheap. Mumblecore is a genre born from material circumstances, utilised by filmmakers with no budget, equipment or often experience, at least starting out. It has always seemed to me like something designed to be graduated out of, a stepping stone to be used and discarded on the way to greener pastures. The stories are rudimentary, often entirely improvised, the camerawork and editing sloppy, almost aggravatingly bad in many cases. The one element that the format allows for excellence in is performance. In it’s improvised, freewheeling format, a talented amateur can shine through the surrounding mediocrity. In this case, the obvious standout is Greta Gerwig, of Barbie fame, who breezes through this film with a perfectly pitched annoying performance. Her character is indecisive, childish and weepy, but also just charming and spunky enough to earn our admiration. In many ways, this feels like foreshadowing of her performance in the far superior 2012 effort Frances Ha, which is itself a premonition of her lucrative transition to directing. Her presence ensures Hannah Takes the Stairs will stay in rotation as a curio, but it’s otherwise an unremarkable piece of low-budget tat with just a touch of interesting storytelling behind it. 4/10.

Tuesday – Wonka

Do people really not like musicals anymore? I can’t help but wonder what changed in the culture, and why, if they’re so broadly unpopular, do studios continue making them and shame-facedly hiding it in the trailers? Wonka is one such example, with trailers that offered only fleeting glimpses of the film’s many song-and-dance numbers. None of the original songs here are instant classics by any means, but they’re presented with sufficiently infectious joy and whimsy to carry the film along at a pleasant step. The story is a solid facsimile of a Roald Dahl tale, with inspirational orphans, wicked grown-ups and fantastical schemes, but what really holds the whole elaborate confection together is the strength of the cast. A stellar collection of character actors give wonderfully unrestrained performances, completely surface level but dripping with joy and enthusiasm. So strong is the ensemble that the film’s ostensible lead, a surprisingly whimsical Chalamet, feels almost extraneous. The diversions into Wonka’s weepy backstory and motivations are the film’s lowest moments. The character is at his best when Chalamet is given some tongue-twisting comedy patter or a razzmatazz musical number. The film would have been better off focusing entirely on the sweetness and cutting out it’s cloying attempts at a bitter tinge. Still, pickings have been rather slim these days for fans of the song-and-dance musical, and this is a perfectly enjoyable offering, despite some glaring visual failings. A sweet 7/10.

Wednesday – Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers.

I can only imagine that champagne was poured when the name Gaylord Focker was first committed to print. It’s absurd, borderline offensive, delivered at the exact perfect moment in the first film’s story to kick our hero when he’s down at his lowest point, a final humiliation as he seemingly loses everything. Humiliation is the name of the game in this franchise, but there is also an element of hope. No matter how badly Ben Stiller fumbles and flounces and debases himself in the eyes of his father-in-law-to-be, there is always the hope that he will be able to claw his way back into that hallowed, vaunted Circle of Trust. Robert De Niro subverts his tough guy image, his character wearing it like an armour against disappointment. There is always the sense that, behind his eccentricities and his gruff manner, he wants to like Focker. He wants his daughter to be happy and he wants to accept her choice of partner, but his own unique manias and hangups cause him to see the worst in everyone, to push them away and force them to play bizarre games for his stunted affections. The biggest missed opportunity of the sequel is that it doesn’t examine or reverse the ideas of the first instalment in any significant way. Rather than having De Niro on the back foot in an unfamiliar environment, humiliating himself to gain the approval of his son-in-law and the senior Fockers, the film merely retreads the original conflict with Dustin Hoffman as a ludicrous third wheel. Ben Stiller stumbling through these scenarios still entertains, but we’ve seen it before. While still entertaining, Meet the Fockers is a mere 7/10, failing to live up to the standard set by the first film, a true 9/10 comedy classic.

Thursday – Ali G Indahouse and Singin’ in the Rain

Maybe Ali G Indahouse holds some deeper, more hilarious meaning for longtime fans of Sacha Baron Cohen’s parodical character. For the uninitiated, Ali G is an exaggeration of every rough, dim, rap-obsessed English lad to ever do it. He’s barely literate, sexually crude, vastly overestimates his own talents, and knows almost nothing about the world outside his limited perspective. In other words, he’d have a decent shot at getting elected if he ran today. Back in 2002, there was still enough faith in political institutions to make this premise laughable, which it is. It’s hard not to feel that there’s something mean-spirited in the way the film portrays Ali’s demographic, laughing at rather than with them, but the film is so nonsensical in it’s politics that thinking too hard about doesn’t feel worthwhile anyway. It’s sketch comedy at feature length, with a decent rate of laughs versus flops, and the joy of watching Charles Dance getting in on the fun with that stiff upper lip that only the greatest of British thespians can maintain while dancing in drag. A 6/10, innit?

Singin’ in the Rain is absolutley soaked through with something that is sorely missing in modern filmmaking: confidence. Stanley Donen and co-director/star Gene Kelly set out to craft the Hollywood spectacle to end all spectacles, and the lasting influence of this film speaks to their success in that endeavour. The film is proud of every set-piece and punchline, steeped in Hollywood history, deservedly self-congratulating at every turn, a technical marvel and a jaw-dropping showcase of the cast’s bombastic talent. Where is this confidence in modern filmmaking? Movies seem almost apologetic for their genre or subject matter these days, full of “well that just happened” and “yeah, this is happening” and “this is like that old movie”, apologising at every turn for themselves, begging for the audience’s attention and indulgence. There is nothing shy or embarrassed about Singin’ in the Rain, nothing to apologise for. It says, “Look at me! Look at what we can do! Look at where we’ve come from! Be amazed! Be entertained!” And so we are. A magnificent 10/10 and a must watch for anybody with two eyes, two ears and a beating heart.

Friday – The Loveless

Kathryn Bigelow’s debut feature film, The Loveless, is a strange experience. Taking place over the course of a single day, it follows a gang of bike-riding hoodlums stopping in a sleepy rural town to repair one of their hogs. The core of the film revolves around a subtle reversal of expectations. The bikers, led by a devastatingly young and gorgeous Willem Dafoe, are exactly like every stereotypical movie biker gang. They’re loud, aggressive, boozy, lather-clad, promiscuous, and generally good-for-nothings of the highest order. Their arrival in this idyllic town (really little more than three businesses and some scattered homes) is an immediate cause of tension, as the locals (and the audience) hold their breath in anticipation of whatever wickedness these hoodlums will inevitably commit. But the day drags on and turns to night, and the bikers mind their own business, and the locals worry, and as the tension grows, it’s the “respectable” people of the town who crack under it, driven mad by the very idea of these people who don’t conform to society as they know it. They hate the bikers because they hate themselves, the lives they’ve trapped themselves in, and hate the idea that other people can just pass through, untethered, free. The bikers are The Loveless of the title, and lucky for it. Love is a prison, love is pain, and love keeps you in one place. The film doesn’t romanticise the life of the roaming criminal by any means, indeed the bikers do still come across as restless, violent, and emotionally hollow, but it does offer a rare perspective on the type of person who would choose that life, especially when the alternative is an airless purgatory like the town of this film. A stylish, atmospheric 7/10.

Sunday – The Adventures of Zatoichi

In the ninth episode of this franchise, Zatoichi is once again in familiar territory, caught up in political intrigue while visiting a sleepy village in the grip of tyrannical Yakuzas. While this entry may be strictly formula, it’s expertly done, hitting all the right beats. Zatoichi charms the locals, swindles gamblers, and makes short work of any ruffian foolish enough to cross blades with him. His characterisation is perfect as always, and the supporting cast is one of the best yet, including precocious acrobatic children, a sad drunk who reminds Zatoichi of his own father, and a comic duo of salesmen who abruptly vanish partway through the film. It also includes one of the more interesting foes Zatoichi has faced yet, a morose swordsman who can’t rise beyond his lowly station, and wants nothing more than to die in a glorious clash with a worthy foe. His scenes are all-too brief and the highlight of an otherwise solid entry, making you wish that this underdeveloped rivalry could have been the focus of the picture. An unoriginal but enjoyable 7/10, which seems to be the comfort zone for this series. While I’m always happy to hang with Zatoichi, I’m hoping for at least a couple more installments in the remaining fifteen films to really rise above.