Casey strikes again

The Killer Inside Me

Michael Winterbottom, master of every genre he touches (and he’s touched all of them – from 24 Hour Party People to A Mighty Heart to 9 Songs), has now produced an R18-rated serial killer movie about a law-man with a dark secret.

I have my own confession to make.  I saw this film back in July, during the film festival.  And I couldn’t bring myself to write about it back then.  I’d like to say it’s because I saw about 17 films in a fortnight, and wrote up all the others, so was a bit tired… But I think it was really about the intensity of Casey Affleck’s latest outing, my serious ambivalence about the film, and just not wanting to think about it for a wee while afterwards…

Five months on, and with its general release at one of my local cinemas, it’s time to complete my record of the 2010 NZFF.

The Killer Inside Me is apparently renowned as a very fine book, by pulp crime writer Jim Thompson.  Set in picturesque, delicate, 1950s small-town U. S of A, Affleck’s sheriff Lou Ford seems like a gentle soul, with his slightly croaky voice and pretty-as-all-hell fiancee (played by Kate Hudson).  It is therefore a complete shock to the audience’s system when we are rapidly introduced to the darker side of Lou’s world – rough sex with a local prostitute (the seriously gorgeous Jessica Alba) that develops into a sado-masochistic (or perhaps just sadistic?) love affair, which descends into murder.  We are spared nothing, at any stage of this relationship, hence the well-earned R18 label.  And to hammer home (if you’ll excuse the term) just how deceptively brutal Lou can be, Winterbottom holds the camera on his victims so that it was I who was forced to look away.  (I developed a mechanism to deal with this, which meant I didn’t risk missing when the scene changed, but didn’t need to take in every moment of the violence.)

And violent it is.  I’d seen my fair share of the Clockwork Oranges and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killers in my younger days, but not lately.  What makes this film at once repulsive and utterly compelling is the superb acting, the production design and photography, the soundtrack and general feel of a film more akin in style to Far From Heaven than Suspiria. (There’s a lot of blood.)  The violence against women in Thompson’s original novel is indisputably horrific and categorically without a snippet of justification, other than to support the characterisation of someone like Lou Ford who is drawn to such behaviour.  Even writing this now I’m not sure how I can legitimately recommend the film, except that I remember being wowed right to the end, and feeling absolutely certain as the credits rolled that Winterbottom had, once again, produced a great film.

The subject matter was never going to be pretty.  It is a credit to all the actors involved that their performances are uniformly excellent (especially Affleck’s).  I don’t know how far this wades into exploitation territory, or downright misogyny, but as a piece of cinema The Killer Inside Me is a brave and beautiful work.  Just don’t ask me to watch it again.

My kind of town

The Town

I like a good heist movie.  Readers will know by now that Heat features very high up my all-time-greatest-films list, and rightly or wrongly has become something of a benchmark for films of the genre.  The bank robbery scene and ensuing escape across central city LA are superb, and Michael Mann oft-applauded for his accomplishment.  As it happens, Ben Affleck’s directorial follow-up to the terrific Gone Baby Gone (which set his brother Casey up as an extremely fine acting talent to watch – don’t get me started swooning over the exquisite The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford…) evokes plenty of Heat, as well as elements of Inside Man, and even Enemy of the State.  Given Spike Lee and Tony Scott brought us the latter films, Affleck can consider himself in good company.

Afflect casts himself as the protagonist, Doug MacRay, son of an imprisoned bank robber (a brief piece of Chris Cooper) who is carrying on the family business.  Along with his best friend Jimmy (a hardened Jeremy Renner, plausibly sociopathic and alarmingly unpredictable) and a couple of other mates, they subscribe to the tradition that has rendered their native Charlestown the real-life bank robbery capital of America.  With that kind of expectation, what other lifestyle choice is a guy to make?

As in so many bad-guy movies, Doug meets a nice girl and wants out.  One last job, then a flight to Florida and (presumably) a crime-free, guilt-free life sipping cocktails with little umbrellas.  How often have we heard criminals talk wistfully of this very thing?  Robert De Niro tried to hang up his SIG P220 in Heat, and again in The Score, and we know it usually ends in tears.

Doug’s girl in this instance is the bank manager of their first job, still suffering from PTSD when he “meets” her in the laundromat and persuades her to go out for a drink.  This is where the film suffers a little in its unrealism – Doug’s charisma must be potent off screen, because Rebecca Hall’s Claire opens up to this stranger immediately, convenient since he initially just wants to know what she’s told the police, but soon he’s sharing deep, painful childhood memories with her and, uh oh, falling in love with her for real.  (Again, this is similar to Neil McCauley meeting the lonely Edie in Heat, and needless to say there are echoes of the trajectory of their doomed romance.)  Add to this Doug’s inability to simply say “I quit”, and you have a genuinely frightening dilemma at the heart of the second act.

The Town has strengths in many areas: cinematically and directorially it is a fine piece of work, with some exciting camera moves (a particular favourite being to circle the actors in the middle of the street as they have some sort of revelation) and uniformly good performances.  Blake Lively (from TV’s “Gossip Girl”) does a good job of playing the skanky ho (if you’ll forgive the parlance), which admittedly is probably an easier role to inject life into than staid bank manager, Claire.  Jon Hamm, everybody’s favourite Mad Man, plays the hunter FBI agent without a hint of parody, and Pete Postlethwaite clearly relishes his role as the head-honcho Irish criminal who sends the boys out on their jobs.

One could criticise the slightly predictable plot and dialogue, but there are clever moments and the various heist scenes are gripping and well-executed.  I do feel that if Doug and the boys had watched Heat as many times as I have, they might have avoided some fundamental errors (Plan your escape route! Don’t rob a bank in a tiny, narrow backstreet that it’ll be hard to drive away from!) – but mostly they did an excellent job.  And despite the disclaimer at the end of the credits assuring the audience that Charlestown is actually full of decent, law-abiding citizens, the film still makes Boston my kind of town.

Jo-Faux: The Joaquin Phoenix Story

I’m Still Here

Surely the first wink was in the title?  Knowing little more than this was a documentary about Oscar-nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix retiring from acting to become a rapper, I felt something was up.  Was this supposed to bring to mind the recent Bob Dylan “biopic” that wasn’t, I’m Not There?  Todd Haynes’ film had a variety of actors (Cate Blanchett and Ben Whishaw the best of the bunch) portraying the great Mr Zimmerman.  OK, so not a documentary, and not purporting to be real – but what could the connection be?

Friend and brother-in-law Casey Affleck (the more talented Affleck brother in acting, and now nipping at Ben’s heels in the directing stakes too) followed the “intense and emotional” Phoenix around for nearly two years, recording what was sold to the whole world as a heartfelt but baffling career change.  Declaring on the red carpet that he was eschewing the acting life that had brought him to fame (“acting is about standing where someone else tells you, being who someone else says, and saying someone else’s lines” he complains, legitimately) for the heady world of hip-hop superstardom, Phoenix takes on the moniker “JP” and stalks Sean P. Diddy Combs until the Diddy agrees to produce his record.

OK, so before the film was released, but over a year after we first heard about his defection to the more laughable side of celebrity and witnessed what must surely be some sort of catatonic breakdown on the Letterman show, it became apparent the film is indeed a hoax.  Or “prankumentary” as I heard coined today.

In any event, this is an extraordinary portrait of a man falling apart.  Rather than donning the clean-cut and handsome style of a Justin Timberlake or the smart, dark intensity of an Eminem, JP presents as a shambling, portly, unhygienic mess of a man.  He rambles to his put-upon aides, smokes pot and giggles, rants about the importance of following a dream (though he does make a very good point when he asks “Is the dream unattainable? or is it [just] the wrong dream?”).  We watch him ordering up prostitutes online, snorting coke, and raving.  Knowing Phoenix’s previous talent, the family tragedy of his losing his brother to a drug overdose, and moreover witnessing just how awful he is as a rapper, it is heartbreaking to watch his rapid, undignified descent.  The skill of this film is that even knowing it’s a performance, it’s still incredibly difficult to watch.

The little-used sub-title of the film is The Lost Years of Joaquin Phoenix and I have to say that very thought occurred to me: Phoenix effectively method-acted his little heart out for going on two years, potentially giving away decent movie scripts, losing any opportunity for a nurturing relationship with a nice lady who isn’t a big-breasted hooker, and doing a lot of feigned shouting and angsting.  That’s gotta be exhausting, and I applaud his skill and above all his courage.  For a moment during the Letterman episode he looks like he wants to laugh (Letterman, utterly bemused by his mumbling guest, says “What can you tell us about your days with the Unabomber?”) and when P. Diddy tells him frankly that his music has a long way to go, Jo-Pho’s embarrassment is almost palpable.  Bear in mind that even if he knows he’s faking, the rest of the world thought (for a long time, at least) that he was just a big, fat loser.  It’s a big gamble, and hopefully one that will pay off now people realise he’s in fact a truly great actor.  Unless they see it as self-indulgent and dull.  Hmm… a double-edged sword.

Affleck has recently admitted the film is fictional, stating that Phoenix’s agent was the only other person in on the joke.  If this is the case, then it makes for excruciating viewing as Phoenix berates his long-time, loyal companions in the manner we’re led to believe Naomi Campbell and other superstars behave.  But if indeed they were all acting, then equally they are to be congratulated on some superb performances.  There was never a knowing nod to the audience, the “wink” we’re all waiting for that will tell us it’s all OK, no one is losing their  mind, we can sit back and relax.

Even P. Diddy (what do we call him? Diddy? Mr Combs? – JP’s angst in the limo en route to meet his mentor is hilarious) is skeptical of the great actor’s intentions.  As are countless journalists, one of whom Phoenix dresses down brilliantly when called on whether his professional ambitions are just a hoax – rightly opining that it’s insulting for people to question him.  With his matted hair, taped-together Ray Bans and aging rock-star paunch, it’s hard to believe Phoenix would be going this far just for a laugh.  And so the world (mostly) plays along.

This is probably where the film makes a very valid comment on the media, celebrity, and how we treat stars.  As Affleck has recently said, people saw Phoenix ostensibly “losing it” yet no one stepped in out of concern.  We watch his friends and colleagues put up with increasingly offensive and alienating behaviour and can’t help but wonder why no one pulls him up on it.  The closest to an intervention is a strange cameo by actor Edward James Olmos who offers him advice about becoming water and trickling down a waterfall.  You be the judge…

Whatever the “truth” to this, whoever was in on it, I’m Still Here is quite brilliant in its conceit and execution, and simultaneously hilarious and painful to sit through.  Whether that counts as a recommendation really has to be up to you…