The cinema was packed, and there was a buzz about the crowd – as you would expect at a pre-release viewing of a new Coen brothers movie.
The Coen boys have long been my favourite writer/directors. You know you’re in for a ride that is going to take you somewhere you haven’t been before. That there will be none of the usual Hollywood signposting, no comfortable formulae to fall back on. That however unfamiliar, however downright weird, wacky, off-beat the course they pursue and the terrain they explore, these drivers know their vehicle. So you strap yourself in and trust them to deliver. And almost always, they do.
Not this time. Not for me, at least. I just couldn’t get on to where the hell they were going with A Serious Man, and by around the half way mark, I didn’t really care. They’d worn me down to a point of fatigue that was hard to fight against. Bored in a Coen brothers movie? Afraid so. Continue reading A Serious Man movie review→
This is a movie of contrasts: the romanticism of lead character, Tom (Michael Dorman), who dreams of a life on the road as a truckie owner-driver, vs the gruelling reality; the openness and youthful optimism of ‘gypsy’ Melissa (Emily Barclay) vs the hard-bitten cynicism of her embittered mother; the basic decency of honest, hardworking truckie Phil (William McInnes) vs the vicious opportunism of fellow driver/drug-pusher/loan shark Johnnie (Ben Mendelsohn).
The narrative is built around these contrasts – a yin/yang battle, if you like. Gifted pin-striping artist Tom is a sensitive, creative soul who is torn between the two loves of his life – Melissa, and his prime mover. This curious ménage a trois proves unworkable. With Melissa stuck out in the middle of nowhere living in a caravan with their baby, and Tom on the road day and night taking speed to stay awake as he fights a losing battle to earn enough to keep up the killing interest payments on his beloved truck and ward off the circling loan shark, something has to give…
David Caesar states he’s been wanting to make this movie for a long time. Perplexing, then, that an experienced filmmaker of his calibre didn’t make better use of the extended gestation period. Continue reading ‘Prime Mover’ – Movie Review→
In an interesting interview on screencave.com, Cold Souls writer/director Sophie Barthes claims the central idea for the movie came from a dream in which she and Woody Allen found themselves standing in front of boxes containing their respective extracted souls. On taking a peek, Woody was offended to discover that his looked like a chickpea. She refused to look at hers…then woke up.
Intriguing, but promising story kernels are a dime a dozen. Strewth, I’ve dreamed up a few myself. It’s in the development of that initial premise where plots come unstuck, especially with scifi and absurdist drama. Cold Souls straddles both genres without fitting neatly into either. But it works and works well, maintaining an internal logic that anchors it in a sense of plausibility defying its absurdist elements, a la Kafka or Nikolai Gogol (my favourite Russian author, to indulge in an irrelevant aside). Continue reading ‘Cold Souls’ – Movie Review→