'The Way, Way Back', 'Elysium' and 'Planes' (sort of): review round-up

'The Way, Way Back' - Dir. Nat Faxon & Jim Rash (12A)

The words "Twentieth Century Fox Searchlight presents" or (better still) "from the makers of 'Little Miss Sunshine'" rarely herald something good. There's a certain quirksome, brightly coloured, ensemble cast-powered American Indie - usually with a sun-faded blue and yellow poster - that comes out every year bearing these stark promotional slogans (or warnings, as I call them). They usually have boring-straight-man-Steve-Carell in them somewhere ("I'm an actor!", these appearances seem to scream) and Alison Janney is never far away - though she's completely superfluous in the latest of these jangly guitar music laden monstrosities, 'The Way, Way Back', which adds to the feeling that a perfunctory box ticking exercise has informed some of the decision making from writers-turned-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash.

This one can be summed up as being about a kid (Liam "one expression" James) who is entirely miserable and unsympathetic in the face of constant, unearned kindness and compassion from almost everyone he meets. Sam Rockwell runs a water park and wants to be this kid's best friend, for... reasons, I guess. It's never clear why. He just starts following him around and smiling at him in a way that should register as creepy. Likewise, everyone at the water park - customers and employees - loves him. Amanda Peet wants to dance with him. Alison Janney is desperate for her son to be friends with him, while her daughter (the three first-name sporting AnnaSophia Robb) is equally desperate to be his summer girlfriend, hanging around looking longingly at him in spite of his clear lack of social graces and charisma.

The cherry on the cake here is that he hates his mother's (Toni Collette) new boyfriend (Carell), as children his age are liable to do. But whereas most kids in his position form an irrational hate they can't reasonably express about a person who's probably decent enough, this kid actually has sees first hand evidence that this guy is a douchebag and gets to shout about it at a garden party - re-framing the story from "angsty teen who needs to grow" to "crusader teen who knows better than the grown-ups about everything".

He should be a sympathetic character. We've all been awkward, moody teenagers. But this kid is his own worst enemy in a world that's throwing nothing but well-intentioned metaphors and sunshine in his direction for the most part... and he doesn't even really learn anything or change at all by the time the credits roll. He enters the film a moody, entitled little shit and exits the film in the same fashion. At the start Carell tells the kid he's a 3/10 and that he needs to put himself out there more and smile occasionally. Well, this is the story of a kid or goes from three to, charitably, a four and a half over an hour and forty minutes that will have you thinking "shit, even Sam Rockwell is bad in this" and "did these guys really write 'The Descendants'"?

'Elysium' - Dir. Neill Blomkamp (15)

It isn't 'District 9' but Neill Blomkamp's follow-up is as ambitious and imaginative as it is clunky. There's a lot of ham-fisted, panto-quality, over-acting involved - notably from Brazilian actor Wagner Moura as "Spider" and Jodie Foster, who seems to be playing a Disney villain in a film happening in her own imagination - while the childhood flashback sequences are a bit cheesy and obvious and, I'll concede, its movement between irreverent, splatter-gore comedy and cloying, string-music backed scenes of children on crutches in peril speak of a tonal mishmash. But it's also got some decent dystopian world building and spectacular design work, as well as some interesting politics for a mainstream blockbuster - with our hero, Matt Damon, framed as an insurgent against the robot drones, unhinged mercenaries and satellite surveillance footage of the film's privileged bad guys - white, wealthy elites living far above a shanty town and predominantly Hispanic Los Angeles in the shiny, clean space station paradise of the title.

The man who once nearly directed a Halo movie, based on the Microsoft video game, continues to borrow heavily from recent sci-fi hits of that medium - notably with elements of Mass Effect and Halo itself. There're some very video gamey future-weapons too, and the plot sees Damon effectively level-up into an augmented mech warrior for some hi-octane fight scenes against Sharlto Copley's crazed henchman that make me question whether I'd rather be playing 'Elysium' than watching it. But it's a solid and entertaining action movie with ideas and a high-concept, so overall I'm enthusiastic about it despite a great many shortcomings.

'Planes' - Dir. Klay Hall (U)

Now, I can only kind of review this - so take my opinion with a greater than usual pinch of salt - but I took my aviation-obsessed 2 1/2 year-old brother to see 'Planes' and he got bored after about 15 minutes, and we left the screening after 30. So I haven't seen the entire movie and usually wouldn't give too strong an opinion based on that. However, I wanted to note that this movie seemed to fail with its target audience: on a plane-mad toddler who will patiently watch actual YouTube footage of a helicopter take off with wide-eyed glee for a very uneventful ten minutes. Sadly, he just couldn't be bothered with the exploits of Dusty the Cropduster and I can't really blame him.

From my end I can only say it's very clear that the film was produced by Disney's straight-to-video people and not by Pixar. It's flat, not particularly detailed and the animation lacks finesse. And, on top of that, it's basically a re-make of the first 'Cars' with a less flawed, more bland central character. That's right: a re-make of 'Cars' made by less talented people. Shudder.

'Damsels in Distress' review:

"It felt longer than it was" said one cinema patron, checking the time on his way out of a showing of 'Damsels in Distress'. Never a good sign. But even worse when you consider Whit Stillman's hyper-stylised indie comedy - his first film in over a decade - lasts scarcely 99 minutes. Yet it really does outstay its welcome despite a beguiling first half and another fantastic performance from mumblecore queen Greta Gerwig, as the defacto leader of a gang of female students selflessly seeking to improve those deemed below their station. It's not that 'Damsels' is without charm, wit or laughs, indeed it's easy enough to see why many cite Stillman as an influence on the likes of Wes Anderson, but it's so resolutely deadpan that it can't sustain beyond the first hour.

It's also at times difficult to locate the target of Stillman's American college satire, with many of his characters so broad and extreme that they seem to lack a clear real-world analogue. There's, for example, the American girl who has affected a British accent after a brief period of study in London and the rich fraternity boy who never learned the difference between colours. Sometimes the film seems a wholly ironic putdown leveled at the vapidity and pretension of youth, yet it could also be seen as entirely earnest and sympathetic towards its off-beat gang of co-eds: the suicidally depressed, the confused, and the tragically dim. It might be that there's something really rewarding and ingenious at the centre of 'Damsels' for those prepared to weed it out. I remain at a loss.

'Damsels in Distress' is out now in the UK, rated '12A' by the BBFC.

'Francine' Berlinale (Forum) review:

It's not often that a director working on their first ultra low-budget dramatic feature stumbles upon an Academy Award winner who actively wants to star in their little movie. But that's exactly what happened to directors Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky, who were originally looking for local non-actors to play the lead role in 'Francine' before Melissa Leo called and asked for the part. Apparently Leo, who snared the Best Supporting Actress statuette last year for 'The Fighter', stumbled upon the script due to being on an obscure local film mailing list. It's a good job that she did because it's difficult to imagine the film without her.

The titular Francine is in almost every shot of the film and though Leo is surrounded by a cast of authentic seeming non-actors, it's important that Cassidy and Shatzky lucked into the involvement of a world class professional for the lead. It's likewise fantastic to see said professional given such a tough and gritty central role, in an industry where women of Leo's age are customarily confined to supporting parts. As Francine, Leo is given the chance to carry the movie on her shoulders, and the result is something special - elevating a lo-fi film shot on handheld consumer cameras to the point where it's one of the clear highlights of this year's Berlinale.

'Francine' takes the perspective of a women who has been released from prison - having done unspecified time for an unspecified crime - presenting her struggle to readjust to the world following a certain amount of institutionalisation. Though competent, on the outside she finds it difficult to maintain any of the low-skilled jobs she takes up, preferring not to talk to co-workers or make friends. When a lady comes to her door with an invitation to a church event the conversation is typically one-sided and awkward, yet Francine goes along to a roller disco regardless. Her inability to connect with people is not for want of trying, yet when she gets there she sits alone on the outside. Even still a male admirer approaches and, with some reticence, she agrees to go on a date with him. However she spends the date either in silence or in her own world on the dance floor (the only place where she seems able to release her inhibitions).

In the background during all of this is Francine's escalating obsession with animals, as she begins gathering dozens of pets, who roam freely around her cramped dwelling. Soon the place is filthy, with the floor covered in feces and pet food. In the past I've heard friends say that they have more empathy for animals than humans, and this is definitely the case for Francine who is only shown to release any of her obvious, internalised pain when relating to an animal. During one scene, working as a vet's assistant, she weeps uncontrollably as a dog is euthanised. In another she loses all sense of proportion and reason when she finds a dog locked in the back of a car in an empty parking lot.

This connection is suggested right from the outset as Francine leaves prison, sticking her head out of the moving car window like an excited dog. Post-incarceration, it seems, she no longer feels like one of us. In leaving Francine's past a mystery Cassidy and Shatzky avoid miring their film in any specific social problem and present a more universal, nonjudgmental portrait of Francine, as a women wounded and irreparably damaged by her removal from mainstream society. That she clearly likes her male admirer and yet only gets drunkenly intimate with a female neighbor speaks more to an inability to break the routines of (potentially) years in a women's prison than it does to her sexuality.