The Search for Sugarman

It has been a long time since I reviewed a movie. It has been a long time since I’ve felt as compelled to as I do about the recent darling of Sundance: Searching for Sugarman.

It becomes very clear as the documentary unfolds that Sugarman, the eponymous and clandestine Sixto Rodriguez, was the lynchpin that dismantled the Apartheid autocracy in the ‘80s, as the vein of anti-establishment running deep in his bluesy folk music inspired a subculture of young, angry Afrikaaners somewhat akin to the punks of Camden, who stared furiously into the eyes of pink-cheeked oppression. As a South African youth, you’ll become very shifty when you realise you didn’t even know we had a Mexican-American messiah (fortunately amorous music-swapping with a pretty girl put Rodriguez’s debut Cold Fact in my playlist about a year ago. I can pretend to be in the know).

The film is framed by the search of two South African fans of the music for a glowing icon apparently lost in the dark, in a cusp-of-the-internet-revolution era. Motivated by rumours of his horrific demise (public gunshot suicides and self-immolation) the fans, a record store owner in Stephen Segerman and a music journalist in Craig Bartholomew Strydom, attempt to piece together the history of a man whom, it becomes increasingly and appallingly clear, is practically unknown in the rest of the world. A series of interviews ensues with a cast of talking heads vaguely Lynchian in their strange mix of cliché and oddity. The questions aimed at Clarence Avant, the record company owner that produced Cold Fact, stood out strikingly, as he becomes extremely uncomfortable, spouting a spontaneously intoxicated ramble of stereotypically down-and-out elderly African American aphorisms.

The confusion and jumble of stories focuses tightly at the film’s halfway mark, as an unexpected message from one of Rodriguez’s daughters ends the search for a dead man by turning up a live one. A slew of incredibly charming interviews with a family that personifies humility reveals much that the soft-spoken musician (and arguably most stylish man alive) won’t articulate himself. A particularly nice aspect of the film is the interviews with Rodriguez’s jokey, slightly overwhelmed and thoroughly working class friends. One in particular seemingly unwittingly has a poetic reverence when talking of the man who just got down to work, demolishing houses in below-the-wealth-margin Detroit. If not for permeation of Rodriguez’s grounded nature, he’d be a Hunter Thompson type (though ironically without the rock and roll flair) as he runs unknown for mayor of his town and earns a philosophy degree. An image of an ascetic, hard-working class poet sharpens as the film fervently sings the praise of an unsung hero.

The mechanics of the film mirror the duality of its story by being in sections classy, finessed, and aesthetically gorgeous, and then lapsing into bizarrely below average editing and colouring techniques, and allowing some slightly jarring plot-holes to promote a dramatic narrative. Fortunately these distractions are soon shrugged off by the contemplative soundtack of Rodriguez’s songs and the exceptional raveling of the story. The film is a paean to the inherent mystery in music being illuminated, and as such, the magnificence of its revelation is stirringly uplifting for the audience.

50/50: The Colourful Side of Cancer

Evidencing with a heartfelt sincerity the value of friendship and family, 50/50, directed fitfully by Jonathan Levine, is the comedy come border-line melodrama of 27-year-old Adam Lerner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and his revelation that he has cancer. Adam is a good guy; he's athletic, dedicated to perfection in his under-appreciated job at a public radio station; he even recycles. None of these are, however, the defence he expected them to be against a diagnosis of a cancer in his spine that has more syllables than sufferers, and is delivered coldly by an eye-averting, monotonous lab-coat. His 'artist' girlfriend, Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard), looking like an attractive version of Marilyn Manson with metallic amber hair offsetting vanilla-blue eyes; and Kyle (a good, but as per usual maddeningly self-narrating Seth Rogen) form the initial pillars upon which Adam relies. He is also remanded into the hands of Katie (Anna Kendrick), a psychologist whose inexperience and youth is supported only by a textbook smile and genuine desire to help. Rachael's support, as we come to expect, joins her fleeting affections, leaving Adam more fully to the devices of Kyle, who in the innocent crudeness of Rogan's perpetual bromantic character-type, uses his friend's illness to score girls for both of them. As Adam starts Chemotherapy, the rest of the film's population surfaces in the form of fellow patients, benevolent Mitch (Matt Frewer) and crass but loveable Alan (Philip Baker Hall). When his relations shift like tectonic plates, with Katie insinuating herself further into his life and Kyle's friendship having to develop in a manner completely foreign to him, Adam slowly navigates the five stages of grief as his condition deteriorates.



The fact that this synopsis reads more like a character-summary is telling of the film's impressive humanity. Based on the true story of, and written by Will Reiser, it's clear that both he and Levine wanted Adam to be the bastion of modern middle-youth: one made important by his lack of status (early in the film a large Anti-Hero sign backgrounds a shot of Adam), and one who is always vaguely in the know, as he treats every opposition with a distant incredulity, as if asking, 'Is anyone else seeing this?' It's the insistence that compared to the protagonist, everyone else is at least a little oblivious, which is a sentiment echoed, if not always as subtly, in recent pop-culture. This negotiation of self-doubt and self-assurance in the lead is almost always heightened by a certain myopia of the supporting cast, and 50/50 is no exception. Katie, by virtue of a childish screen-saver and her missing a Doogie Howser reference, and Kyle who's more in common with a baby weaned on South Park than a functioning adult, exist in part to solidify Adam as a hapless sufferer of the kind-hearted, but slightly silly people around him. Katie is emblematic of this condition when at her first consultation with Adam, she stutters 'I want you to t-trust me." As always, though, it is in his darkest moments that Kyle and Katie shine, and leave Adam, and the viewer, feeling a little guilty for our condescension. It's an old ploy, but one done so well in 50/50 that is leaves little trace of the author's hand.



It is when the film turns from its happy-go-lucky humour, stoked by Rogen's zesty ad-libbing, to the weighty, even melodramatic confrontations with the illness, that it is clear how affecting these lives have become. Kyle's insistent and reckless friendship, Katie's club-footed negotiation of her patient/friend relationship with Adam, and the suffocating worry of his mom, Diane (a proud Angelica Huston), all work to conjure a relational power that far surpasses the film's narrative value. Though these relationships lapse into the overwrought at times, their tenderness is still just as touching. It's with hindsight that 50/50 garners some of its enormity - the story is undoubtedly a synecdoche of a fear and situation all-too-common to popular conscience. Whilst this may sound a little gloomy, the film navigates the despair of the situation with wit and hope, marking it as a genuinely impressive film.

 

The Dynamiter

Crystalline microcosms of rural Mississippi introduce Glen Allan; the isolated, fringe-of-America town which is the setting for the small-budgeted, big-hearted story of The Dynamiter (2011), the debut feature film from documentarian Matthew Gordon. The brothers Hendrik, Robbie (William Ruffin) and Fess (John Alex Nunnery), while away listless Summer afternoons in the countryside, stabbing hay bales, throwing 
homemade spears and revelling in their shared adolescence. Fourteen-year old Robbie gently but insistently 
educates his younger brother about everything he considers important; self-defence, an almost ascetic work 
ethic, and most significantly, the importance of family. This filial loyalty is instilled despite their own family life 
being dysfunctional; Robbie heads the home, taking care of his mentally myopic grandmother, there is no sign 
of either of the children's fathers and their shared mother is reportedly in California, trying to nurse her own 
mental breakdown. 

A vestige of family normalcy, however, seems to arrive with the return of the boys' older brother Lucas (Patrick
Rutherford), a former star sportsman for the local high-school and current freeloader and seducer of meal-ticket
women. Although the end of his absenteeism sparks a hope in Robbie of having a real family (he idealises the 
unit that Lucas's return might finally establish), it soon becomes clear that the situation can no longer hold water,
and Robbie has to decide how to rescue himself from the situation.


The smallness of The Dynamiter is made stunning by its masterful production; a soundtrack primarily consisting
of Animal Collective and Mumford and Sons is lacquered dreamily to visuals resonating with agrarian intimacies
that avoid tracking back into the stock-footage of rurality. More impressive, though, is that the cast consists of 
non-actors; residents of the community whose plausibility and earnestness negates the need for conventional
acting. Rutherford, Nunnery, and especially Ruffin, deliver a forceful reminder that formal theatrical training can
be dispensed with when the actor genuinely connects with the soul of the story.     

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

2011's Durban International Film Festival is currently splattered across the city like a pyrotechnic peony, exhibiting a smörgåsbord of cinematic outings originating from distant locales around the world. For instance, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) arrives from director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Thai homeland (though it detoured through last year's Cannes Film Festival to pick up the Palme d'Or), and gently, lazily spun through its reels at UKZN's Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre this Friday past.

Conspicuous before any character is made worthy of investigation is the grinding hum of Boonmee's atmospheric audio, and its intentionally, beautifully degraded film-stock which, for the majority of the film's excursion into Thailand's ominous forestation, remains decidedly underexposed. Eventually the eponymous Uncle Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) surfaces from fashioned obscurity, made vague through languid filming, when the parole of his different relationships (with his late wife's sister, with his farmhands, with his medical aide) work to display the kind, faintly tumultuous mind of a man approaching death due to illness in his kidneys. The mundanities of his life are then emphasised, rather than thwarted, when one evening the apparition of his late wife fades into an empty seat at Boonmee's dinner table, only to be later joined by their son who had vanished years before, and who is now closer in appearance to a man-sized monkey than the man he was. The mostly underwhelming entrance of spectres from Boonmee's past into his present indicate the obliqueness of Weerasethakul's film, which has a The Sound and The Fury-like non-differentiation between one's history and memories, and one's current state. Occasional reminiscing by Boonmee, accentuated by a stunning vignette of still photographs, navigates his regrets at killing communists in a distant war and killing insects around his home. This deliberation is as bathed in absurdity and dim turmoil as the rest of the film, but its ability to place past emotions on a tangent with his current disposition especially affecting.

Uncle Boonmee dawdles almost listlessly through its 114 minutes; its commitment to not being hurried bordering on tableau vivant. Admittedly, the movie is more fondly remembered than viewed; it’s tedious in that it films tediousness. Yet, without being hindered by traditional narrative structures (the film is interjected by a seeming Thai fairytale in which a princess lamenting her looks is seduced by an amorous catfish) Uncle Boomee has an austere grace as  it ebbs and flows, moving from thick forests, through a cavernous portal to the afterlife, and into guadily lit urban areas. Resisting simple explanation of the film's many bizarre esotericisms, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is nevertheless a worthwhile expression of surrealism's value in delving into the mysteries of death, and everything thereafter. The film will be re-screened at Musgrave on July 30 at 22:00.

Another Year - Vice, Virtue and the Price of Missing Your Chance

Social realism stalks the circular edge of dying light encompassing veteran British director Mike Leigh's Another Year (2010), a tonal film of emotional complexity and the many manifestations of fear at having missed one's chance of ardent companionship, both sexual and sentimental. Framed metaphorically by the seasonal ebb and flow, Another Year begins in the Spring, showing off the quiet and inexhaustibly happy relationship between geologist Tom (a magnificent Jim Broadbent) and therapist Gerri (played with impressive subtlety by Ruth Sheen) as they tend to their local country patch. Whilst their happiness is enduring and their love for each other earnest, it smarts of stridency when compared to their luckless friends, who wistfully look on and wonder why it isn't theirs.

Mary is Gerri's friend and a secretary at the practice where Gerri works. Played brilliantly, with artful attention to detail and exceptional expressiveness by Lesley Manville, Mary is staring down a bleak future; a failed marriage and inability to find a suitor for her enamour, middling in age and feeling increasingly like a victim of a cruel world, she has turned to drink as an escape. The film offers no such escape to the audience, however, delving into her increasingly frenetic breakdown, scarcely masked by a visibly conscious effort to appear altogether and content.

Ken (Peter Wight) is Tom's friend, and shares an uncannily (and a little annoyingly) similar story to Mary. The similarities include failed relationships, and dour outlook and an addiction to food that mirrors Mary's propensity for wine. Ken is equal parts heartbreaking and off-putting - glugging heartily at the beer can which seems to be an extension of his hand, and then continuing to chew the food already in his mouth. This focus on vice is soon penetrated though, as he breaks down sobbing in front of Tom and Gerri, whose oracular guidance once again is inspired by tales of their shared happiness.

Whilst the film more than delivers a stunning cross-section of conjoined joy and hopelessness, an issue arises in that Another Year repeatedly lapses into ill-definition of intention, where the happy couple's (as well as their adult son's) demeanour seems as easily interpreted as facetious as benevolent. Knowing looks and (hopefully) unknowing perpetuation of a power-imbalance between the couple and their friends adds a potentially perverse nature to every offer of advice or invitation to dinner.

That Another Year starts with Spring, it's immediately striking with a burning ominousness that it will invariably end with Winter. As Mary's psyche begins to fray and her mask slips, scenes from what could be the film's prologue come to mind. A doctor analyses a clearly depressed woman, and after ascertaining her inability to sleep, begins questioning a number of potential causes - alcohol, drugs, caffeine. The role of vice as a coping mechanism overlays the biting realism of Another Year, and the dangers of escapism shine through. Special mention must be made of the wonderful dialogue - buoyant and fluid during Summer and Autumn, it peters into grasping monosyllables in Winter, and its insistence, although frustrating, is immaculately dynamic. Another Year is a contender for modernist excellence.

Somewhere

Gently rippling across the silver screen and into a vague familiarity within the appreciative collective consciousness is Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, an insistently languid film further exploring the theme of gilded isolation (well established in her former accomplishments Marie Antoinette and Lost in Translation), but with the focus this time settling on emptiness.

The emptiness is at the core of Johnny Marco (a charming, sincere Stephen Dorff) and it's the result of a life of movie-stardom that's eventually stunned him into functional atrophy by pandering to his every whim and want (indeed to the point that he falls asleep while watching a tandem pole-dance for his sole pleasure). Donning the two-tone t-shirts with stretched collars and cuffs, customary of the professional actor (seriously, the uniformity amongst the Hollywood elite is uncanny), Marco's ample time is barely occupied by being on the promotion trail for one film, and starting the tentative production of another; a life many dream of (permanent residence at a grand hotel filled to overflowing with beautiful women and twenty-four hour servitude of the faceless staff), but one that's enjoyed tepidly nonetheless. Causing the rippled waters to foam, though with impressive reserve in Coppola's writing they never break, is the return of Marco's daughter Cleo (a remarkably engaging Elle Fanning, who, thank Goodness, isn't also just a big set of eyes), first as a visitor, then as a roommate for an indefinite period.

The story proceeds in Coppola's token ebb and flow, taking on the appearance of a series of related vignettes (mimicking Marco's jig-sawed existence) rather than knitting a fully formed narrative. The slow dynamic of Marco's realisation of his fragmented self, which lurks idly in between the scenes, is left to the audience to piece together, instead of being laid bare before us. The specificity with which these scenes were chosen and created (you can count them in the trailer) seemingly belies a purposeful depthlessness among the characters and what you can't help feel should be rampant symbolism. In reality, Somewhere's stringent postmodernity is reiterated to a knife-edge; in fact, to the point that two of the six people in the theatre walked out amidst remonstrations of the slow superficiality. Indeed, the film is about as overly manufactured and cliché as the Ferrari Marco drives, and as his 'Made in the USA' tattoo suggests. The shallow star and his prodigal child is in no way a new story. But these are not drawbacks; they're a bitterly familiar perception of the experience of both ourselves and others, and more importantly, they provide a space for genuine, reactionary emotion to break the seed cover and hesitantly germinate.

Somewhere is a wry, but ultimately graceful coupling of the amusing and absurd (Chris Pontius of Jackass notoriety is peppered in a few scenes), and it culminates in a signature discovery of self-expression. It is tirelessly carried by Dorff and Fanning's delicate and discerning acting, with the 13-year-old outstandingly navigating her character through slight bemusement and dedicated attentiveness. Go watch Somewhere, but don't forget to exhale and relax when the Focus orbs colour the screen; it'll help you find the right mood to enjoy it.

Tarnation - Harrow in Home Movie

There is something vaguely terrifying about the idea of exposing both the intimate and mundane minutia of one's life and history to a faceless audience. This is despite the hazy, two-minute-noodle epoch currently exploding like an omnipresent and seemingly infinite pack of Tom-Thumbs taking much sting out of the elevation of self to diffuse and unfocused public spectacle. Insecurity succumbs to the need to exist, if only virtually, and through pretence.

That a movie like Tarnation can develop in such a social climate is a staggering exemplar of tenacity, revealed through the brutal honesty of intense self-reflection. This reflection is of Jonathan Caouette, and the mirror is his camera. Starting at age eleven, Caouette began filming his tumultuous existence for a project that would ultimately see its fruition only twenty years later.

Tarnation is a dossier of documentary footage, sound clips, snapshots and dramatic re-enactments, detailing the heartbreaking story of a family dissolved by abuse, narcotics and ignorance. The film's main line is revealed, after an introductory ten minutes as ascendant as the film is low-budget (costing only $218), when supporting text details the events that lead to Caouette's mother, Renee, slipping into severe mental disorder. With a resigned persistence, Caouette's attempts to record his mother's begrudging and slow-to-surface exorcism of her demons results in a therapeutic purging of the filmmaker's own knots of discord. Despite a personal history of abuse, manifesting in traces of nihilism and a number of suicide attempts, it was Caouette's strength to overcome, and his courage in trying to help his mother throughout and despite his own pain, that makes this film truly affecting.

Tarnation was released in 2003, so it isn't coming to a big-screen near you. Don't, however, let this stop you; Tarnation is well worth the effort.

Film Review - True Grit

Striding on to the silver screen in recent weeks is the Coen brothers' latest entrance into atmospheric, though slightly less avant-garde than usual, period film. True Grit, as per tradition both written and directed by the duo (though adapted from a 1968 book of the same name), delves into the late nineteenth-century American frontier, where after the brutal betrayal and murder of her father, 14-year-old Mattie Ross (played by the talented and commanding young actress Hailee Steinfeld) seeks a man with the aforementioned grit to pursue the killer, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). Eventually she settles on the most 'ruthless' of those available, an eye patch-wearing drunkard U.S. marshal of dubious moral persuasion by the title Rooster Cogburn (drawled in yet another impressive performance by Jeff Bridges).

Joining the pair (when he hasn't abandoned them due to some or other offense) is the aloof and comically proud LaBoeuf (a plucky Matt Damon, who although unusual for the role, fills it fitfully). After some disagreement about traveling arrangements, rectified by Mattie's tenacious legalism and a faith in propriety born out of her Protestant ethic, the unlikely party head off after Chaney, who they believe to have joined with the notorious "Lucky" Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper) and his gang.

True Grit appears to be one of the Coens' more dedicated genre pieces, providing a human, ground-level view of Western morals and dynamics. Stylishly, the drama is often elevated in appearance to a platform where the surprising juxtaposition of landscape and background make the settings seem like an expansive stage rather than a location. This was largely supported by some incredibly skillful lighting and an antiquated, mostly formal parole, theatrically contrasting the actors with their situation. Action was often focused on from a distant or removed perspective, adding further subtlety to the audience's role as voyeur rather than calling attention to it. In an unusual turn for the Coens, likely due to their strict adherence to the film's novelistic origin, there are five quarters of story to True Grit, rather than three. The rug was still firmly under my feet upon exiting the theatre. Ultimately, though, True Grit offers an accessible black comic realism that will leave you itching for more.

Film Review - Boy

Stand-up comic Taika Waititi shows his movie-making mettle by writing and directing 'Boy', a funny, endearing and perceptive insight into the journey through adolescence of 11-year-old Alamein (a vocal and powerful James Rolleston, who's been labelled with the movie's title as a nickname). Set in a particularly plausible version of Waititi's homeland circa 1984, a luscious, rural New Zealand is the stomping ground for Boy, his mischievous friends, his brother (who believes he has super powers) and his confidant goat. The absence of his father for the better part of his childhood has left a role model-vacuum, filled by his idol Michael Jackson, and by the severely inflated fantasies of whom he imagined his dad to be: a war hero, deep sea diver, and, naturally, a phenomenal dancer. Things take a turn, however, when Boy's father, also named Alamein (played by Waititi, who delivers a fantastically charming buffoonery that never becomes annoying) arrives one night with some reprobate friends fresh from prison soon after Boy's gran, the family matriarch, leaves for a week.

Understandably, Boy is enthused to get to know his fast car-driving, gang-leading dad, and he does all he can to shed his juvenile title in hope that he will not be left behind again. However, as Alamein snr's real reason for returning becomes clear, and as the discrepancies between the fantasy and his father's reality widen, Boy has to navigate his way into maturity in a manner he'd never before anticipated.

This film has a rare take on the familiar coming-of-age theme. Whereas most stories in this vein seem to grant their young protagonist in the dying minutes an adult understanding of their issues, 'Boy' tactfully shows a personal growth that remains contextualised by childhood, rather than one that leads out of it. Although the movement of the child actors is a little wooden or feigned at times, a special beauty continues to shine throughout the rest of the film, with the dialogue, camera work and production value sharing excellence in equal parts. This, coupled with the film's visual detail and originality, keeps a recurring amazement until the credits roll.

Special mention need also be made of Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu, who plays Boy's younger brother, the stoic, deeply pensive Rocky. He manages to translate the character's inner turmoil so acutely through his reserved façade that it becomes difficult to not immediately empathise with him, rather than sympathise from a distance.

Boy has not been released in South Africa yet, but keep a look out for it soon.

Film Review - The Concert

The Concert, directed by Romanian filmmaker Radu Mihaileanu, is a mercurial yet dazzling get-the-band-back-together French and Russian language film.

Unabashedly buoyant, The Concert portrays Andrey Filipov (Alexeï Guskov) as an endearing but broken janitor, who 30 years prior was a celebrated conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra. His fall occured when Filipov was publicly ousted for refusing to fire his Jewish musicians at the Soviet government's behest.

When Filipov intercepts an invitation for the Bolshoi to play at the Châtelet Theater in Paris, he recognises his last chance to reunite his gypsy and Jewish musicians and to finally perform Tchaikovsky's Violin concerto. The show hinges, however, on Filipov's demand that the graceful Anne-Marie Jacquet (a regal, if slightly too self-restrained Mélanie Laurent, whom I've been eagerly awaiting to see again after her role in Inglourious Basterds) will agree to be his violin soloist.

Whilst the reasons for Jacquet's inclusion are disquietingly called into question, Filipov has the added frenetic nightmare of getting the reprobate musicians to the stage on time, if he is to ever lay the ignominy of his past to rest.

The first two thirds of The Concert brilliantly established nuanced yet endearing characters within a plot readily poised for humour and affection. Wonderful scenes of tongue-and-cheek villainy aligned with films detailing lighthearted impersonation and miscreancy were delivered consistently, satisfying the expectations you didn't anticipate having at the start of the movie. Frustratingly, the final chapter flounders at the point that should have been easiest to sell: the performance. Mihaileanu lost some sight of his tone by jarringly adding the odd moment of outrageous and over-the-top humour with the emotional climax. Though it was only moments that periodically interjected, they made it difficult to maintain in the film's closing the emotional connection so well established in the previous chapters.

Despite this momentary loss of focus, The Concert easily soared for a number of other reasons. Fantastically lyrical scenes developed with a tender yet robust levity, exceedingly well supported by a score that never over-stepped it's bounds into interference (compared to, for example, August Rush). The acting was also nearly uniformly superb, with special mention necessary for Dmitri Nazarov as Aleksandr 'Sasha' Grosman, who played the unassuming and heartbreakingly earnest best friend to Filipov. The Concert is a must-see.

Film Review - The Tourist

German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Tourist, which couples generally-dopey math teacher and eponymous traveler Frank (Johnny Depp) with permanently poised Elise (Angelina Jolie, who tries to occupy a space even smaller than her already diminutive frame), is an oddly comic caper where nearly every character embodies a dispassionate, truncated duality of good and bad.

Aboard a train headed for Venice, Italy, the primary setting for The Tourist, Elise selects Frank as a simulacrum for a mysterious letter-writing lover, Alexander Pierce, in order to confuse the overly conspicuous police presence (fronted by the disappointingly bland Paul Bettany) watching her clipped yet swanky movements. Frank is in more peril than he realises though, as he is also inadvertently mistaken for her lover by some gangsters that Pierce had swindled for a song in the past. As Frank becomes the target of paralleling vendettas, he has to clear his name and make sure he doesn't lose the too-good-to-be-true woman who's impacted his life so suddenly.

The dialogue, though it struggled to float consistently, allowed a space for the opulent settings to swallow the viewer. Unfortunately the same tact cannot be noted for the extras direction; there were far to many tanned, suited men turning their heads as Elise sauntered in and out of their collective consciousness. This coupled with an annoyingly high number of scenes placing Jolie at the helm of a boat with an ironing-board back and a score that was a little too insistent in its jocularity, meant that a less-is-more approach could have given the movie some more of the life it needed.

Still, the end effect was genuine entertainment; The Tourist hasn't enough detractions that it should fall by the wayside. Go see it for a simply fun time at the movies.

Film Review #1 - Winter's Bone

Currently showing at Gateway's Nouveau theatre is Winter's Bone (2010), the gritty and compelling portrayal of tough-as-nails 17-year-old girl, Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) tastefully directed by Debra Granik. As Ree negotiates being the only caretaker of her two young siblings and mentally absent mother, she is shocked to be informed by the local sheriff that her fugitive father, a methamphetamine cook, is to stand trial in one week, and should he not show, their home will be usurped as collateral.

Scouring a landscape of barren rurality for her father, she is met with opposition from everyone she turns to for help; seemingly to all share blood ties, the townsfolk clearly do not want Ree snooping around. With the only assistance coming from her father's embittered, coke-addicted brother, the likelihood of Ree's success is as murky as the persistent forest framing the edges of nearly every scene.

Whilst it is common enough for a stark setting to be used to make emotion more vivid, Winter's Bone soars where many other films of this particular intimacy fail: in being tender without being sentimental; in being frank without being overbearing. The film permeates a potential violence on the cusp of every interaction, masterfully allowing suspense to steadily build upon itself. Winter's Bone won the Best Screenplay and Grand Jury awards at the Sundance Film Festival, and is nominated for a Golden Globe.