17th Aug2014

The Rover – Film

by timbaros
images-226The Rover takes place in Australia ten years after a massive economic collapse, while two men travel together on a journey that takes them through dangerous territory, only to meet uncertain fate at the end.
Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson star in the new film by director David Michod (Animal Kingdom). Pearce is Eric, a former farmer. He’s murdered his wife and all he’s got to his name is his car. When a gang of thieves steals his car, he does whatever he needs to do to get his car back. In his frantic journey to find his car, he encounters one of the brothers of the thieves – Rey (Pattinson), young and not so bright. Eric is the only person who knows where to find his brother so off the two men go, on a journey where they encounter all types of people who barely survive Australia’s harsh and brutal landscape. This include carnival performers, Asian refugees, aboriginals, cautious shopkeepers, and the military, who try to maintain peace in the region – unsuccessfully.
Their journey to retrieve Eric’s car is a dangerous one – they get into all sorts of shoot outs, and when Eric is captured by the military, Rey comes to his rescue and ambushes the soldiers in their compound. And at the end of their journey, what’s in Eric’s car that he desperately wanted to retrieve will surprise you.
The Rover is similar in story and in plot to the Mad Max films, where bandits roam the countryside and kill anyone and anything for food. The Rover is also very similar to the fantastic The Road, where a father and his son roam around trying to survive after an unknown catastrophe hits the earth. But The Rover is not quite as good as these two films. At 108 minutes, it’s a bit lengthy and gets a bit boring, with characters who come and go. And during intense shootouts, Pearce and Pattinson’s characters somehow survive where they were outnumbered. Director Michod’s Animal Kingdom was an excellent study of a crime family and it’s stone-cold matriarch (which was played by Jacki Weaver), but in The Rover we really don’t know much of Eric and Rey’s characters, and who they are or any of their background. So when the final shootout in the film takes place, we really don’t care who lives or dies, we just want the film to get to some kind of conclusion.

 

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17th Aug2014

The Congress – Film

by timbaros
images-225Expecting to see a political film, I was not prepared for what transpired on screen in the new film The Congress. It’s a mishmash of live action and animation that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
The Congress is actually supposed to be an attempt to be a take-off on Hollywood (as in Robert Altman’s Shortcuts). Robin Wright plays herself (her character is named Robin Wright); a 43-year old actress whose career is on the wane because she’s getting older and there are not a whole lot of roles for her. She has two children, Sarah (Sami Gayle) who is sassy and a rebel, and her younger son Aaron (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is slowly going blind. They live (strangely) near an airport where her son likes to watch the planes and fly kites.
When Wright’s agent Al (played by Harvey Keitel) tells Wright that she had it all when she was 24, studios came crawling to use her, but now she’s pretty much box office poison and that she should sell the rights to her younger to Miramount Studios (Miramax and Paramount combined – get it?). He tells her that she will become rich if she does so (and so will he) and that this will “make her young forever.” It takes a while to convince her but eventually she comes around. She has her whole body and facial expressions scanned by the studio, with Al helping her to express these.
Twenty years later, Wright is driving in the desert to attend a futuristic conference (as it is named). While’s she driving her character becomes animated and it is at this point that The Congress becomes confusing. From what I can gather, it’s a conference of actors (former actors) who have transformed themselves into all sorts of characters, including Tom Cruise, who has also sold his image to remain young forever on screen. But then all sort of things take place with Wright – she flies into the air, she takes over the mic at the conference and tells them her views on becoming an image (including her regret to go CGI), then a revolt takes place, and at this point it’s not too clear how this part of the movie relates to the beginning. It really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Don’t get me wrong. The animation section of The Congress is stunning and could’ve been used as a separate movie, but to tie together and to make sense of the live action and animation in this film is the struggle. It just doesn’t make any sense. Sure, the story of an ageing actress wanting to remain young (on screen) while at the same time selling her image as she wants to be financially secure for her and her family is a great storyline, but what unravels onscreen is not this story. The Congress is too confusing yet visually stunning, so you decide if you want to give it a go. I left the screening scratching my head.
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