STILL ALICE (12A)
***
Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland, 101 mins
Starring: Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart
Julianne Moore justly won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance as the Columbia University academic whose memory begins to fail and who is eventually diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. The brilliance of her performance lies in its matter-of-fact quality. This is not a grandstanding, diva-like turn, but one that is all the more affecting because of its restraint. Alice Howland is a wife and mom as well as a linguistics professor. She is intelligent and has an extraordinary grasp of language. Then the words begin to fail her. At first, she reacts to her deteriorating condition in dismissive fashion, as if she will soon overcome the problem, as she has done every other hurdle in her life. She has her work, her jogging and her word puzzles to occupy her. As the condition worsens and she realises her mind is going, she is pragmatic in he way she deals with the repercussions on herself and her family.
Writers and directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland have written a rich, multi-layered screenplay that works equally well as family melodrama and as a meditation on language, identity and mortality. There are even elements of a mystery-thriller in the style of other memory-loss movies, such as Memento.
The film deals with Alice’s relationships with her husband and children in subtle fashion. There is an attrition between Alice and her would-be actress daughter Lydia (Kristen Stewart). Alice can’t hide her dismay that Lydia is throwing away the chance of a college education in the hope of a career that may not materialise. Stewart is excellent, capturing Lydia’s mix of defiance and devotion toward her mother. Alec Baldwin also registers strongly as the husband whose love for Alice can’t quite temper his own career ambitions.
Visually, the film, shot on a low-ish budget and with the look of a TV drama, is underwhelming. It seems a little bland and conventional given its subject matter and Moore’s searing performance.
WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD (15)
****
Gregg Araki, 92 mins
Starring: Shailene Woodley, Eva Green, Thomas Jane
Gregg Araki movies tend to be outrageous, provocative and cartoonish in their treatment of teen rebellion, angst and sexual confusion. This rites-of-passage tale is as stylised and bizarre as its predecessors but has a heartfelt quality and tenderness that they have often lacked. Shailene Woodley (who tends to be seen in more mainstream films such as The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent) makes a thoroughly engaging heroine, rebellious, precocious and vulnerable by turns. She plays Katrina, a girl growing up in a seemingly conventional family in the suburbs. The hitch is that her mom Eve (a very flamboyant Eva Green) has vanished, leaving her home alone with her very straitlaced father (Christopher Meloni). We see plenty of Eve, both in dream sequences and in flashbacks. Kat is having her first romantic adventures with Phil (Shiloh Fernandez), the good-looking but moronic boy next door, and with Detective Scieziesciez (Thomas Jane), the rugged cop assigned to investigate her mother’s disappearance. Araki blends film noir-like elements with an engagingly offbeat, Adrian Mole-like look at adolescence.
CHAPPIE (15)
**
Neill Blomkamp, 121 mins
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Sigourney Weaver, Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel
There are some clever and provocative ideas about artificial intelligence swirling around in Chappie, the latest feature from the District 9 director Neill Blomkamp, but much of the film is derivative and messy. The early scenes are in the mould of RoboCop. We are in South Africa in the near future. The “world’s first robotic police force” keeps order in the townships. These droids are manufactured by an arms company headed by Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver). Her employees include idealistic Deon (Dev Patel), who dreams of creating a robot with a human consciousness, and the macho Vincent (Hugh Jackman).
The hero of the film is Chappie (played by Sharlto Copley), the robot programmed by Deon to think and feel like a human. The best part of the film focuses on his growing pains. Poor Chappie is a good robot at heart but risks falling under bad influence. It is a case of nature versus nurture as Deon encourages him to be gentle and creative while the gangsters who control him teach him gangster slang and try to coach him to take part in a heist. Blomkamp plays skilfully on our emotions, making us feel as attached to the young robot as we might do to the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. The liveliest performances come from South African rap-ravers Yolandi Visser and Watkin Tudor-Jones as Chappie’s bad-ass adoptive parents. They dress like extras from Mad Max and behave as if they belong with Fagin’s gang in Oliver Twist. Like us, they can’t help but take a shine to their robot child. Jackman is playing the villain. It’s an unsympathetic and one-dimensional role for a star of his magnitude. Sigourney Weaver is seen only fleetingly and the action sequences are shot in a strictly routine style reminiscent of Call of Duty computer games.
APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR (15)
***
Desiree Akhavan, 86 mins
Starring: Desiree Akhavan, Rebecca Henderson, Scott Adsit
The writer-director-star Desiree Akhavan’s lesbian romcom is well observed and often very witty. Akhavan plays Shirin, a young, Brooklyn-based Iranian-American trying to get over the break-up of her relationship with Maxine (Rebecca Henderson). “Just because your breasts are small, that doesn’t mean they’re not legitimate,” the assistant in the lingerie shop tells her when she goes to replace her underwear (cut up by her jealous ex-girlfriend). Akhavan picks up on Shirin’s multiple anxieties – about her appearance, her sexuality, her career prospects, her fear of her parents’ disapproval – without ever allowing the character to lapse too far into self-pity. Whatever situation she is in, whether walking over hot coals or caught in a threesome with some creepy bohemians, her ironic humour is always her shield.
KILL THE MESSENGER (15)
***
Michael Cuesta, 112 mins
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Oliver Platt
Pitched somewhere between an Alan J Pakula conspiracy thriller of the 1970s and a family drama, this is the “true” story of investigative journalist Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner). Webb was a reporter with the San Jose Mercury News who broke a sensational story about the “dark alliance” between the CIA and the Contras in Nicaragua and cocaine smugglers in the US. He was briefed against by the CIA and roundly smeared, and his methods were questioned by rival media organisations. The stories that made him a national figure took a toll on his personal life and career.
Renner, who also produced, plays Webb as a reckless, free-spirited journalist, racing around on his motorbike or in his sports car. When he is writing his most important article, “Know Your Rights” by the Clash pumps out on the soundtrack to reinforce his rebel credentials. It is a rousing performance but the film is a little one-dimensional in its portrayal of Webb as a result. By emphasising his heroism so forcefully, the film-makers risk straining the complexity from the story. Kill the Messenger ends on a muted and ambivalent note. The film-makers are strangely reluctant to explore what happened to its subject in the years after his scoop, relying instead on intertitles to do the work.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS (15)
**
Ken Scott, 91 mins
Starring: Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson, James Marsden
Vince Vaughn would make an excellent Willy Loman in a revival of Death of a Salesman. Here, he has the presence, charm, desperation and sense of yearning that characterise Arthur Miller’s doomed anti-hero. Unfortunately, this is a very goofy comedy with a script that opts for jokes about glory holes and penis sizes over meaningful characterisation. Vaughn plays Dan Trunkman, a salesman who walks out on his company after his hard-nosed boss Chuck Portnoy (a scene-stealing cameo from the excellent Sienna Miller) threatens to cut his pay. He forms his own sales outfit with 67-year-old Timothy McWinters (Tom Wilkinson) and youthful nincompoop Mike Pancake (Dave Franco). A year and several random plot twists later, the team head to Germany to clinch the deal that might save the business. Cue lots of excruciating scenes in beer halls, gay nightclubs, naked saunas and hotels that double as art installations.
DREAMCATCHER (15)
****
Kim Longinotto, 97 min
An exemplary piece of verité film-making, Kim Longinotto’s moving and insightful documentary profiles Brenda Myers-Powell, a former prostitute who runs the Chicago-based Dreamcatcher Foundation, an organisation that mentors and supports sexually exploited women and at-risk youngsters. At times, the film seems like a chronicle of suffering but there is a tenderness and humour that belies the grim subject matter. Longinotto follows the inspirational Myers-Powell on her nighttime rounds of the city and in classrooms where she shares her experiences. Among the most colourful subjects is Homer, a dapper former pimp, reformed and one of Myers-Powell’s allies. Her interview with him is one of the few times we are aware of the unobtrusive Longinotto’s presence – and we begin to realise what guile and patience it must have taken her to catch all this footage.