So far this year I’ve spent a lot of my weekends sitting in the cinema, but it’s burned me out a bit – I need to keep the cinema as something I look forward to rather than something that I need to do. I’ve been ticking the boxes in terms of seeing all the high profile Oscar baiters, but it’s left me resenting those evenings and weekend’s I’ve spent in the darkened screening rooms. Plus, it’s pretty windy and rainy out there right now, so cycling 20 minutes and then sitting in wet jeans for the following two hours is a much less attractive prospect to sitting on the sofa with a DVD. So no new releases this week, but rather two very good video discs:
J C Chandor has been on film-journalists’ radars recently because of his film All Is Lost, or “the almost silent one with Redford in a boat” as it’s widely known. Chandor’s won plaudits for his innovative and dramatic writing and direction on the project, plaudits which have a remarkably familiar tone to those given for his work on his first film, Margin Call.
While All Is Lost focusses on the silent actions of a lone central character, Margin Call is a dialogue-heavy recreation of the birthing of the 2008 financial crisis from the perspective of a range of characters sitting on the various rungs of a stockbroking company ladder. A young Wall Street worker discovers the fragility of his company’s practise of selling the now infamous toxic assets and passes the news up the hierarchy. The writing offers an accessible window into the complex world of such financial dealings whilst refusing to baby the audience with heavy exposition. The characters are extremely well rounded, the interaction adroitly observed, the pacing expertly judged and the moral arguments of the financial crisis astutely delivered. Some of the monologues, especially one delivered by Paul Bettany in a sports car, really stuck a chord with me in an intellectual rather than emotional sense – something rare for a piece of fiction.
But my praise shouldn’t be limited to the writing and direction, the cast ply their trade with the skill that you would expect from actors with such pedigree. Led by a predictably strong performance from Spacey they all inhabit their well-written characters with real humanity, from the relatively inexperienced Quinto to seasoned Irons and Tucci.
I hadn’t expected to enjoy a dialogue-heavy film that charts the beginning of a stock-market crash, but this really surprised me. And makes me regret missing All Is Lost when it was in cinemas. If you have any interest in this area, or just a love of films with more to them than exploding helicopters, then you should check it out.
The also-watched:
I love this film. I was bored last Saturday night and didn’t really want to schlep my way to the local world of cine, so I dug out my DVD of The Iron Giant. Based on the Ted Hughes book but transferred – as so many films are – to a US setting, this mixes the 50’s B-movies doomsday musings with an Amblin-esque boys-own adventure, all beautifully rendered in traditional style animation with a sterling voice cast. In terms of contemporary kid’s films, this belongs alongside Pixar’s finest – exhibiting as it does a timeless charm, not reliant on popular references but focussing on strong characters with easy charm. If you haven’t seen it yet, I will lend you my copy.
Eat-Run-Watch 