Review: Sicario

Year: 2015

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Screenplay: Taylor Sheridan

Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro

Synopsis is here:

Higgins: “No. Absolutely not. We have games. That's all. We play games. What if? How many men? What would it take? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime? That's what we're paid to do.”

-          Three Days of Condor (1975)

Ice Cube: “You get AK’s from Russia and Cocaine from Columbia.”

Eazy E: “And ain’t none of us got a passport! So you might wanna check the source…”

-          Straight Outta Compton (2015)

Sicario plays a behind the scenes of the source Eazy E mentions, by the rules similar to what Higgins implies. Beginning with a tense and explosive siege, the grim revelation that’s found becomes an ominous analogy. Although less Skeleton’s in the closest, more corpses in the plaster wall.

Underground Rapper Immortal Technique could have conceived an album based on the narrative curveballs that Denis Villeneuve’s crime drama spins towards its viewer. It’s a film which not only firmly cements Villeneuve’s recurring theme of personal, insular prisons, but once again highlights that such prisons tickle down from the larger containment. In Villeneuve’s twisted doppelganger humdinger; Enemy (2013), this involved the sticky webbed influence of Spiders. Here in Sicario, we’re asked to pry apart the tenacious strands of the drug trade, which have been weaved between North and South America. 

This tightly wound production falls into a similar camp as A Most Violent Year (2014). The moral structures that our lead character; Kate (A passive, but seething Emily Blunt) begin to deteriorate and crumble to show how much of a fallacy the lines of the law really are.  No one is to be trusted and the long arm of the law is cracked and fractured in several places. We keenly observe this in the opening shots, were swat teams operate a high risk manoeuvres while neighbours take dogs on their afternoon walks. In the lead up to one of Sicario’s more tense sequences, mutilated bodies hang freely under intersection freeways, while locals nonchalantly play squash in the next street. Good? Bad? In the world of Sicario, it just is.

Much is owed to Roger Deakins cinematography. His control of light and shadow is effortless, as is his ability to clarify the imagery to augment the message. Sicario holds wide shots which isolate Blunt’s Kate both outside and inside government structures which she suddenly feels alien to. The Star Spangled Banner gloatingly hovers over or behind her while she argues her case. So much for what she considers as the American way. By the time we get to the third act, which involves locating border tunnels, we’re viewing images in inferred camera Inverting colour into blurred monochrome shades of gray. We are literally in the dark with little awareness of who the villains are, even though the team have gone in as friends.

It’s easy to argue that Sicario comes at a time where the competition doesn’t feel as stiff as previous eras. It’s not a typical period piece or biopic that fares so well during the Oscars. But that doesn’t matter in the slightest. Sicario not only throbs and pulses like it’s near elemental soundtrack. Its brutally precise execution of its themes, sit in the pit of the stomach like a block of ice. Denis Villeneuve confronts the subject with the same dynamic fortitude that makes Sicario stand tall with similar features of its ilk. For this blogger, this is one of the year’s best. 

Review: Ex Machina

Year: 2015

Director: Alex Garland

Screenplay: Alex Garland

Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac

Synopsis is here

I’m currently reading Dataclysm, an irreverent view of data dating, social science and human behaviour by Christian Rudder, one of the founders of OK Cupid. The book is a sharp and witty insight into how social networks, search engines and the internet are quickly revealing more about ourselves and our urges than we would like to think. Unfortunately, I saw Ex-Machina while I started reading Dataclysm and I found myself more than slightly unnerved.

Ex-Machina holds two moments for me, which not only feel eerily plausible, but frighteningly close. One conversation is between Nathan (Issac) and Caleb (Gleeson) in which we discover how the female A.I. obtains her knowledge. The other is a grander reveal within the plot, which is almost brushed away like a small aside, yet had me wonder why certain, powerful companies have now poured vast amounts of cash into drones and robots. Ex-Machina doesn’t expand too far from an episode of Black Mirror, however the film’s three central leads, and Garland’s evocative screenplay engages with our anxieties with conversations and mind games in a way that feels fresh as well as frightening. 

Garland’s directional debut, reminiscent of Frankenstein, is a remarkable clash of contrasts. It’s deliberately paced yet we always get the feeling we’re hurtling towards something. Its cinematographer Rob Hardy shoots the film with impressive wide angles, and yet the films isolated locations and limited cast, give a grim sense of claustrophobia, much like The Shining (1980). The film lingers on the form and physique of the female Machina, Ava (Vikander) which it wants us to admire, yet the male characters Nathan and Caleb indulge in profound conversations which not only progress the screenplay organically but hint at the ugliness of human nature. This constant disharmony, which appears in so much great sci-fi, is what drew me into the film.   

The film’s leaning on the male gaze, as observed by some female writers, while feeling problematic to some, actually felt to me as an accurate portrayal of the shallowness of human beings and the ease of how their emotions can be manipulated. Also the lead female character, clearly inhabits the most agency. Garland’s film delivers us an A.I. that not only holds our knowledge but may also make better use of our mistakes and flaws. The most fascinating thing about the film however is how the combination of Vikander’s elegant performance and the great use of the film's premise, like Under the Skin (2014), has the audience question both gender politics and human connection in a deeply absorbing way. From a surface view, the treatment of female characters within the film can be seen as deplorable, and yet that is only if you consider the female characters to be “human”. If the film hits you in the right spot, you go with your gut. I do not mean this as a criticism of female writers who find some of the film's sequences problematic. However, I must stress at, not only the motivations behind the more sinister characters in the movie, but also how well the mechanisms work within the story. Even I felt perturbed by some of the aspects I witnessed in the film. I feel this is because I felt for Ava.

Dominic Gleeson and Oscar Issac create the kind of combative foil you would expect from a feature like this. Issac embraces his inner Victor Frankenstein with added boozing, gym visits and creepy dancing. It is a completely bombastic turn around from his performance in A Most Violent Year (2014). Gleeson brings his likable charm to the table. Caleb’s pining for Ava is believable and his paranoia towards his situation is palatable. Watching the three characters trade blows against each other strangely reminded me of Richard Linklater’s Tape (2001), but the resonance I felt between them was far more effective here than anything I found in films such as Her (2014) or A.I (2001).   

Ex-Machina does what good sci-fi should, which is, despite the more fantastical elements we may witness within the narrative, it never loses touch of the human element. My knowledge of the singularity may be a little light, but I found ideas the film poses to be well presented, while the way the story uses those ideas to toy with its characters and the audience to be thoroughly invigorating. Garland’s debut directional feature stride into those darker areas of our grey matter with the sort of confidence that I wish the likes of Transcendence (2014) could attain. Let’s hope Garland can continue making his science fiction so good that it continues creeps me out when I read my non-fiction.

Review: A Most Violent Year

Year: 2014 (U.K Release 2015)
Director: J. C. Chandor
Screenplay: J. C. Chandor
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo, Alessandro Nivola, Albert Brooks
Synopsis is here:

It is extraordinarily cliché to say, yet you suddenly realise that while watching A Most Violent Year, the implications behind the words are what give the film its power, rather than the words themselves. It’s a film that has garnered a muted response, despite solid word of mouth.  A part of me feels that A Most Violent Year’s more restrained approach may be the reason. In spite of the film’s sharp and pointed moments of violence, it’s a film that hints at a world that has already suffered bloodshed. The film has no need to be overtly explicit because we feel it’s already been down that road. The disorder is being normalised.

The film, like Oscar Issac’s immigrant businessman; Abel, is on a constant simmer. We wait impatiently to see Abel be pushed into the murky depths of corrupted competitors, bias D.A’s (A solid David Oyelowo) and secretive wives, but we should know that he’s already keeping his head above water. Issac looks like he’s channeling Godfather era Pacino, but this man is struggling much harder to push back from darker forces that wish to consume him. Set against the bankrupt, crime ridden era of the early 1980’s which New York City was at one of its lowest ebbs, Issac plays a man who throttles his frustrations so they only ever so slightly peak over the surface. His drivers are scared, he implores them to be strong. His wife (a steely, Lady Macbeth-like Jessica Chastain) suggests fighting the violence in the city with a force of their own, and he tries hard to refrain.  J.C Chandor taut screenplay and direction paints Abel as a delicate blend of honesty and anti-villain. A clean looking screw, being wound tighter by tighter by the grimy tools around him. Yet Isaac’s poker faced portrayal veils Abel with an added layer of complexity.  We’re never sure if he’s been swayed or remaining strong.

As opposed to the romanticised view of gangster dealings in line with the likes of Coppola and co, this film shares a brittle tone with films like A History of Violence (2005) and We Own the Night (2007). Chandor’s film envelops each scene with a similar suffocating sense of foreboding. With A Most Violent Year however, the film often feels chillier. The warm, golden colour tones are not only juxtaposed with the soft white snow (a fortunate accident during production), but cinematographer Darius Khondji’s use of negative space. Characters often find themselves isolated within the frame, only smothered by the crooked environment.

This is why I loved A Most Violent Year. The film never builds to a typical, clichéd crescendo. There’s no orgy of violence despite the film’s title. Each scene burrows under the skin and festers in a way that’s hard to wipe off. Its climax is unsettling in its subtlety while the outcome chills the nerves with its tiny reminder of how far the films particular type of corruption reaches and who exactly gets hurt. That’s the thing about the film. It’s difficult, it’s adult and holds more shades of grey than Christian.