Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

In a movie industry that encourages simplicity and accessibility, the Coen brothers and their almost uniformly excellent, resolutely quirky films have always set themselves apart. Where most other directors and writers would celebrate the triumph of the human spirit, Joel and Ethan Coen craft movies that practically take delight in the futility of human endeavour. Life and its attendant twists and turns, their oddly-named characters discover, just happen to you, however you might try to dictate your own terms. Even their fizziest of comedies have a darker soul buried beneath the laughs.

In much the same vein, Inside Llewyn Davis defies easy categorisation. It’s ostensibly about the titular Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), a struggling folk singer who couch-surfs across New York to avoid sleeping on the streets. For the week in his life that the camera stays with him, Llewyn is hunting for the cat that slipped out of his grasp when he was staying with the wealthy, Jewish Gorfeins (Ethan Phillips and Robin Bartlett). Along the way, he tries to ply his trade, hunting down a job opportunity in Chicago that might free him from his stints at the tiny, smoky Gaslight Café tucked inside New York’s bustling Greenwich Village.

Tucked away within the meandering narrative, however, is a soulful meditation on the fickle nature of fate, fame and fortune. Frequently, movies and well-meaning mentors tell us that we are the architects of our own success: if we want something badly enough, if we’re talented and work hard, the universe will provide us with a happy ending.

The tragic folk ballad that is Llewyn Davis, the hapless anti-hero of his own life story, tells us something quite different. Here is someone enormously gifted – this would be a different film entirely if Llewyn only thought he was a good singer – who has never managed to grab onto the spotlight when it flickers over him. He shares it, briefly, with singers who will go on to do far greater things than him. (Watch out for the iconic tousled mane and harmonica of the man who will soon change the face of folk – and popular – music forever.) Money, fame and joy seem to elude Llewyn at every turn, despite (and sometimes due to) his best efforts to get by.

Inside Llewyn Davis also works as both road trip and character study. As we travel with Llewyn from Manhattan’s classy Upper West Side to the narrow, boxed-in apartment of his best friend Jim (Justin Timberlake), we get a peek into Llewyn’s tenuous relationships, even the best of which are wrung dry of favours and predicated on lies. In an almost callous way, he fights with Jean (Carey Mulligan), Jim’s girlfriend, over an indiscretion, and in the next breath, lunges desperately after a cat that bears a passing resemblance to the one he lost.

Llewyn’s determination to do whatever it takes to get noticed – to get a job – also underscores the surreal road trip he endures to Chicago. This is perhaps the most characteristically Coenesque stretch of the entire film, the black humour played with a twist of sarcasm and irony as Llewyn is trapped in the car with his fellow passengers. He must suffer the derision of pushy jazz musician Roland Turner (John Goodman) and the casual disinterest of beat poet Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund), until circumstances – odd as they inevitably are in a Coen film – separate them all again.

The performances in the film are, in a word, sublime. A struggling actor for many years, Isaac must have seen the parallels between Llewyn’s story and his own. This is his moment in the limelight, however, and he knows it. Isaac plays the highs and lows of the Coen brothers’ melancholic script with marvellous self-assurance, and is hauntingly note-perfect in the songs and stories he spins for unappreciative audience members. Mulligan, Timberlake and Goodman all deliver memorable supporting turns, the first two even contributing a beautifully-harmonised rendition of Five Hundred Miles (with Stark Sands) to the soundtrack.

Anyone looking for the same oddball dynamics and sensibilities that the Coen brothers have honed to a fine precision in films like Fargo and No Country For Old Men should take heed: Inside Llewyn Davis is made of gentler, subtler stuff. It’s a snow-washed blend of amusing drama and bitter comedy, played at half the tempo of the Coens’ more frenetic output. As such, it might appear languid, and even a bit lifeless on a first viewing. But it’s that rare kind of film which lodges itself firmly in the heart – or perhaps the soul – as it makes the most melancholic, magical music for a man who’s slipped between the cracks.

Basically: Never has an elegy been so full of life, incident and gentle, comic tragedy.

Trouble With The Curve (2012)

Here’s the thing: Trouble With The Curve is possibly one of the most formulaic, predictable shows you’ll see this year. Every aspect of its sports drama plot, interlaced with a prickly father-daughter relationship and the blossoming of young love, feels like it’s been done a thousand times before, probably possibly better. Here’s the other thing: for some inexplicable reason, Curve remains eminently watchable and surprisingly good despite its utter lack of originality and fresh ideas.’

The grizzled, grumpy Clint Eastwood plays grizzled, grumpy Gus, a legendary baseball scout who’s too ornery and set in his ways to retire, even when he starts losing his eyesight. In the age of spreadsheets and fancy computer programmes, Gus’ boss Vince (Robert Patrick) is starting to wonder if he should let Gus go. Gus’ old buddy Pete (John Goodman) stands up for Gus, and gets him one last chance to scout out the arrogant Bo Gentry (Jo Massingill). Gus doesn’t want to admit that he sorely needs help – so it’s a good thing when his worried daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) insists on tagging along for the ride, even though he’s coming perilously close to losing her patience once and for all with his lack of emotional responsiveness.

As you can see, it’s a time-worn plot, creaking from familiarity and overuse. Gruff father figure gruffly refuses help. Headstrong, independent daughter insists on helping anyway. They clash. They learn about each other. They bond, reluctantly, at first, and then more happily. Along the way, they engage in fierce competition – for the sport in question here is scouting and not baseball itself – and the outcome… well, it’s pretty much known to anyone who’s watched a movie or two in their lifetimes.

And yet, somehow, for a movie that should technically languish on Saturday afternoon tv or be found in a bargain basement discount bin after going straight to DVD, Curve is a more engaging and rewarding watch than anyone would expect. Every single story beat can be seen from a mile away, and there isn’t really a trouble with the curve here when, well, there isn’t much of a twist in the tale to speak of. But it’s put together in a solid fashion by Eastwood’s long-time collaborator, director Robert Lorenz, and Randy Brown’s script more than occasionally tosses out a sharp, smart snatch of dialogue that manages to be surprising in how delightful it is.

Probably the main reason anyone would watch this in the first place is the pretty strong cast – and for good reason. They’re no doubt what elevates the mediocre material to become something unexpectedly good. He might be talking to chairs in real life, but Eastwood’s granite jaw, weather-beaten face and growly charisma remain intact. He’s likely the only person alive who could make Gus’ graveside confession to his wife just the right side of touching rather than incurably maudlin, even when he breaks into a sad, sweet rendition of You Are My Sunshine.

He shares great chemistry with Adams, who makes the feisty, independent Mickey a joy to watch – she gives her character greater complexity and depth without ever having to try too hard or rely merely on the clichés that riddle the script. She even strikes up a fun, zippy relationship with Johnny (Justin Timberlake), an erstwhile recruit of her father’s whose life hasn’t gone the way of his dreams… just as Mickey and Gus’ probably haven’t either. Timberlake again proves here that he has a career in movies waiting for him if he really never makes another record again; his onscreen charm is an easy, unforced one, and he certainly doesn’t come off any worse when he shares the screen with either Eastwood or Adams.

If you’re looking for a fresh, radical piece of cinema, Curve is very much not the movie for you. There isn’t an original bone in its body and I’d be pretty darn shocked if anyone found the plot surprising in any way. But, beneath the occasional whiff of over-ripe melodrama and the predictability of the story, Curve manages to be good, occasionally funny, and affecting despite itself, as its trio of characters fumble their way towards and away from one another.

Basically: Predictable father-daughter sports drama that’s surprising only in how it somehow manages to actually be, well, pretty good.

Black Snake Moan (2007)

It’s difficult to sum up a movie like Black Snake Moan: after leaving the cinema, you’d probably find yourself hard-pressed to shake the feeling that writer-director Craig Brewer had tried his darnedest to make a movie as hilariously, freakishly outlandish – and therefore memorable – as possible. And whatever his motivations, it’s tough to deny that he succeeded. His quirky cast of characters, after all, includes raging nymphomaniac Rae (Christina Ricci), heartsore produce farmer Lazarus (Samuel L Jackson) and perpetually anxious enlistee Ronnie (Justin Timberlake). It’s not long after Ronnie leaves Rae for the army that she falls into a seemingly neverending spiral of depravity and casual sex, until she’s left for dead before Lazarus’ home, beaten to a pulp by Ronnie’s purported best buddy Gill (Michael Raymond-James). The plot is fairly predictable, but serviceable given what eccentric, engaging people Brewer has concocted: the recently-dumped Lazarus must, in keeping with his completely unsubtle name, rise to live again, to rediscover his purpose in life after being dumped by his wife for his brother. This meaning he finds through rehabilitating Rae, which, for bondage fans among you, is equivalent to his chaining her to his radiator and essentially preventing her from stepping out of his house. When Ronnie returns suddenly and finds Rae gone, can he force himself to again overlook her promiscuous reputation and trust that the love she still has for him can continue to keep him sane?

If it isn’t clear from how quickly my synopsis slipped from quirky to sentimental, BSM, for all its outer trappings of howlingly desperate nymphomaniacs chained to radiators but nevertheless screwing the brains out of virile young men who should cluelessly happen by, is an old-fashioned story about redemption and love. Yes, love. In the end, Brewer’s story is really about the age-old themes of dealing with loss (Lazarus gritting his teeth as he bulldozes over his wife’s rose garden), loving someone despite not quite being able to trust them (Ronnie’s impassioned adoration of the hopelessly unfaithful Rae), and becoming a better person (Rae coming to terms with her demons, Lazarus with his, and both embarking on loves and lives both old and new). Maybe that’s what Brewer is going for: in a world defined by the fantastic and surreal, there are still some home truths about people, human nature and the power of a good redemptive story or two that never fail to grab the hearts of an audience eager to find some hints of themselves even while escaping into the vicarious safety of the movie world.

With his quirky perspective on people and genuine appreciation for blues music, Brewer adds a couple of genuinely nice touches to BSM – one of which, of course, is the churning, heartfelt music that forms the soundtrack of these characters’ lives. Aching songs of lovelorn poetry, as gritty as they are ethereal, punctuate the movie – frequently sung by Jackson himself, and helping to ground BSM in an emotional reality that transcends the movie’s occasionally ludicrous characters. The strange bond that has coalesced between Rae and Lazarus is nowhere more clear than when he strums his electric guitar and howls lyrics of pain and loss into a crashing lightning storm, and she wraps herself around his leg and begs him to keep singing, to keep the demons away. As the scratchy black-and-white documentary footage that opens the film informs us, we’re looking at the characters through the lenses of the blues: music for the love-battered heart that, for some reason, just keeps on pumping through the pain and the suffering and all that other terrible, terrible jazz.

This is nicely balanced out by Brewer’s willingness to indulge in some bizarre comedy, making the most of Rae’s sexual predilections to inject some humour, some fizz of life, into the otherwise rather gloomy proceedings. The moment when Rae wakes fully to discover herself chained to the radiator of what she can only assume is some pervert’s house – priceless. As she struggles mightily to free herself, running full tilt out the front door, Brewer has no problem indulging in what would generally be an editing no-no: a slow-mo cut of her being yanked, cartoon-like, backwards by the chain keeping her tethered to the radiator. Other moments you would never expect to find funny are also played, rather delicately and skilfully, for laughs: for instance, when the painfully young Tehronne (David Banner) is almost brutally dragged into Rae’s arms after she has tried to resist the urges that make her what she is.

Not to say that Brewer manages to pull this off entirely successfully. His reliance on homespun truths, hidden beneath a veneer of eccentricities, ultimately weakens his story – notably when he tries to explain why Rae is a nymphomaniac. Thematically, I suppose, it’s important to know what trauma she might have suffered in her childhood to turn her into a nymphomaniac who seems only able to salve her troubled soul when engaging in sexual intercourse with someone (almost anyone). But, as Rae rails against her mother in the local supermarket, the movie slips into a sombre, far too realistic key after that, losing some of the quirky spark with which Brewer so happily doused his creations through much of the movie.

Brewer’s two leads are excellent: Jackson eschews his typical, stylish-as-all-get-out characters to play an ordinary guy with a bit of a beer gut and a broken heart that needs to be healed – even if that means tending to the wounds and soul of another human being who’s none too grateful for his efforts, at least initially. Whether Lazarus is growling out bluesy notes of pain and longing, or dumping Rae into an icy bath to break her fever, Jackson plays him with an innate dignity and equanimity that keeps the character interesting rather than hollow. Ricci, too, wrings everything she can out of Rae. She’s given to histrionics and more than a little over-acting, but she manages to make Rae almost winsomely broken, an object of sympathy rather than – as would be the case in more conventional movies – one of derision and, possibly, revulsion. Timberlake is fairly convincing as Ronnie, showing some dramatic chops which, if honed, could speak of a promising career in future as something other than just a pop singer. S Epatha Merkerson has a nice cameo as the lady who warms to Lazarus and represents, for him, another opportunity at rebirth.

For a film that ostensibly appears to be like nothing you’ve seen before, boasting characters of a particularly kooky, possibly offputting bent, BSM surprises by being a movie more about essential truths than pure and simple titillation. It’s a bizarre setting with strange characters, sure, but one grounded thoroughly in very real emotions – and is as a result a refreshingly original way of looking at stories that have been told a million times before.

Shrek The Third (2007)

Ah, the dreaded threequel – Shrek The Third thundered into cinemas this summer at the tail end of a bunch of other movies claiming to end off movie trilogies (Spiderman 3, Pirates 3 etc). As with its fellow box-office hopefuls, has the law of diminishing returns wreaked its havoc in the magically satirical, tongue-in-cheek land that is Shrek‘s Far Far Away? Well, there’s no denying that Shrek 3 is nowhere near as impressive as either of its predecessors – it lacks the sheer inventive wit that made the first movie such a breakout success and instant animation classic, and has considerably less spark than the second film – failing to come up with a new character quite as potent and immediately popular as Puss In Boots, for example. That being said, Shrek 3 has the advantage of coming from a family of films that has long ago ironed out a winning, charming formula that works just fine; simply by not deviating from it, and on occasion pulling out a corker of a funny scene, this movie avoids heading down that dread road known only as sequel-mandated mediocrity.

Big ugly green ogre Shrek (Scottish accent courtesy of Mike Myers) is blissfully married to his princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), but finds himself increasingly having to fill in for the ailing frog king (John Cleese) – usually with disastrous consequences – on the latter’s royal duties. When the frog king finally croaks (wow, that was too easy… almost like the writers PLANNED THAT PUN!), Shrek decides to seek out Fiona’s cousin Arthur (Justin Timberlake) and get the pimply pipsqueak to take over the throne instead. But even as Shrek hunts for Artie with the help of his trusty, noisy sidekicks Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss (Antonio Banderas), the nefarious Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) tires of life as a bit-part actor and rounds up Far Far Away’s foulest villains – including a snarly Captain Hook (Ian McShane) – to take over the kingdom while Shrek is away. Can Fiona, her feisty mom Lillian (Julie Andrews) and a coterie of fairytale princesses go against storytelling convention to save the day?

So plot is very much not Shrek 3‘s strongest point – the story remains pretty trite, however much the writers try to pepper it up with Shrek’s anxieties about becoming the father of a brood of ogre babies he can’t control, or Artie’s wistful teenage angsting about not fitting in anywhere. From a bumbling, unlikely anti-hero in the first movie, it’s become clear over the course of three movies that heroism comes only in a big, green and farting version. Which also means that it’s a foregone conclusion that poor old Charming, however hard he tries, isn’t going to get away with his scheme. But, and this is the key reason the movie remains so enjoyable despite having a predictable, almost piss-poor story, the draw of the Shrek franchise has never been its plot. Each movie has had a quest of sorts for Shrek to undertake – and the fun part comes in watching the characters and situations, ranging from the outlandish to the downright hilarious and almost always utterly inventive, spill out around him as he struggles mightily to complete his quest.

I must admit that it is quite a shame that Artie, the new semi-lead character that had to carry quite a bit of the film’s emotional ballast, is weak and not particularly memorable. He’s a plot device, nothing more, nothing less. I suspect that there’s also only so much the writers can do with Shrek and Fiona – they both remain amiable presences throughout the film, and it’s undeniably sweet the lengths to which each will go to save each other’s big green asses. But that’s something we’ve known all along. Unlike in the first movie, when the quirks and foibles that made up their thorny, prickly relationship formed the basis of the film, they are almost the sideshow here, as the movie explodes merrily in every other direction, new characters teeming off the page and onto the screen with great enthusiasm.

Fortunately, there really is no shortage of great minor characters in Shrek 3, to the extent that some of the older, better-established ones get short shrift in terms of screen-time. Donkey and Puss, for instance, remain wildly funny, as anchored by the brazenly confident vocal performances of Murphy and Banderas… but one gets the sense, as they’re plunged conveniently into an extended body-swap joke, that the writers were looking for cheap, easy jokes rather than the more thoughtful, sly situational comedy they’ve concocted before. But who really wants to quibble when you get a host of new secondary characters as loopy and amusing as this batch? The fairytale princesses, all voiced by SNL alumni and each one a riff on a popular Disney character, are a hoot – Snow White (Amy Poehler) is as aggressive a bitch-on-wheels as a dainty princess can be; Sleeping Beauty (Cheri Oteri) a narcoleptic who falls asleep at random points throughout the film; and Cinderella (Amy Sedaris) is more than a little obsessive-compulsive in her need to clean up after. And because the Shrek producers felt that they hadn’t plundered Disney’s archives quite enough, we also get the chance to meet revered wizard Merlin (Eric Idle) – except that he’s gone rather barmy, decked out as he is in his too-short nightshirt and living in a tricked-out, New-Agey house that plays inspirational music on cue when Shrek and Artie need to have a “moment”. Even Hook gets a look-in as a typically rubbish panto-type villain, even breaking out a piano at one point to bang out the soundtrack for a fight scene… until Shrek smashes said piano to bits. At least in this respect, Shrek 3 retains the cheeky, irreverent tone that made its predecessors so much fun to watch.

I couldn’t wax lyrical about the characters without pointing out that some old favourites get great moments too. Returning favourite Pinocchio (Cody Cameron) gets a monologue in question form, as he tries to muddle Charming up completely while avoiding telling a lie about Shrek’s whereabouts. The three pigs with inexplicable German accents (also voiced by Cameron) are cute too, forming a mini-Greek chorus as Charming interrogates the fairytale creatures. Best of all, however, is the return of the Gingerbread Man (Conrad Vernon) in what is surely one of the funniest scenes all year – when threatened with bodily harm by Charming, the ever endearingly squeaky Gingerbread Man is afforded a unique moment when his life literally flashes past his eyes, and you’re not likely to see anything more inventive, funny and just plain wacky for a long, long while.

Throw all these characters in the mix, with some really classic, typically snarky lines of dialogue (“Help! I’m being kidnapped by a monster who’s trying to relate to me!”, and an exchange I can’t quite recall now between Donkey and Puss about why Donkey wears no underwear) and you’ve got a movie that trundles along at a happy, thoroughly enjoyable clip. Is it as good or as creative and fresh as its predecessors? No. That’s pretty obvious. But if a movie like this can shoehorn a moral so unsubtly into its plotline (‘You and you alone make you the person you want to be – who cares what other people say about you!’) and emerge mostly unscathed at the other end, you gotta give it some props. Shrek 3 doesn’t grab you in the heart the way some of the best animated films (like Shrek or The Incredibles) can, preferring instead to coast along on its tried-and-tested formula of pop-culture references and witty in-jokes. A sellout? When are Hollywood movies anything but? Perhaps the one other thing I can say in favour of Shrek 3 is that, although this movie boasts some marvellous animation (watch Charming toss his sparkling golden hair in the wind!), this is emphatically not one of those animated movies when you find yourself occasionally, or even far too often, distracted from the story by the gloriousness of the animation (see: Ice Age 2). That doesn’t make it a classic, by any means – but it surely makes it entertaining. And with doubts cast over both Spiderman 3 and Pirates 3 as to whether they were worth the film they’re printed on, why look any further than the reliably formulaic, reliably funny Shrek 3 for a summer blockbuster that really will please all the family?