Film Review: Begin Again (2013)

Writer-director John Carney had a surprise hit in 2007 with his lovely, lo-fi romance Once, in which a man and a woman (Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová) fall in love while composing music together. It was a thoroughly charming and winning story - one that was given extra resonance when the two leads fell in love in real life and toured together as The Swell Season - that felt like a scruffy, raw debut album, the kind that people fall madly in love to. If Once was Carney's "Funeral", then Begin Again is his "Neon Bible"; a slicker, more polished sophomore effort that has much the same romanticism that its predecessor had, but lacks that sense of intimacy.

Film Review: The Unknown Known (2013)

In terms of its style and subject, The Unknown Known feels like a spiritual sequel to director Errol Morris' Oscar-winning documentary The Fog of War. Both turn Morris' deeply unnerving Interrotron onto the faces of former Secretaries of Defense who presided over long, disastrous wars (in The Fog of War, the Secretary was Robert McNamara and the war was Vietnam; in The Unknown Known, the Secretary is Donald Rumsfeld and the wars are Afghanistan and Iraq); both offer overviews of the personal lives of their subjects as well as their political careers; both supplement their near-unbroken eye contact with archive footage, occasional flashy graphics and insistent, faintly menacing music.

Film Review: Blue Ruin (2013)

The first twenty minutes of Jeremy Saulnier's darkly comic revenge thriller Blue Ruin works as a great illustration of F. Scott Fitzgerald's maxim that action is character. There's almost no dialogue during the opening movement, and what little there is tends to be muted or fades out soon after it starts, but Saulnier perfectly elucidates the nature of his main character, Dwight (Macon Blair). Introduced taking a bath in a house he has broken into (before then jumping, naked, out of a window when the owners come home) the film establishes him as someone who is resourceful, able to survive on his wits, but not terribly forward thinking. He knows how to get what he wants, be it a bath, some food or a couple of dollars from recycling cans, but he doesn't think about the consequences until it's too late to do anything about them.

Film Review: Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? (2013)

There are a number of interesting questions and thought experiments posed throughout Michel Gondry's Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? in which the aggressively whimsical filmmaker recounts several conversations he had with the influential philosopher, linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky. They touch upon several interesting ideas, such as the importance of language in shaping perception and how humans understand language from an early age. They also talk at length about Chomsky's childhood during the Great Depression, and how attending a "Deweyite" progressive school shaped his intellectual development. It's a film with plenty to say, or at least it is about a man who still has plenty to say.

Film Review: Joe (2013)

According to Joe, the perpetually angry hero of David Gordon Green's film of the same name, restraint is the only thing keeping him alive. There's a certain wry humour in that statement, considering that these words are spoken by Nicholas Cage, an actor for whom the word seems so foreign it might as well be written in hieroglyphics, but there's also a great truth to it, both for the character and for the film that surrounds him. As played by Cage, Joe is a man who seems constantly on the verge of committing acts of terrible violence. He's introduced as the head of a crew responsible for poisoning trees so that they can be torn down and replaced, and he seems to be holding himself more or less together. Very quickly, though, it becomes apparent that his job and life are constructs designed to contain his propensity for self-destruction, which boils over in a handful of shocking, darkly comedic scenes that make good use of Cage's volatile physicality. He's not a consistently violent man, but Joe is definitely dangerous, and that sense that he could just flip out at any moment shadows him at every moment.

Film Review: The Wind Rises (2013)

Flight has been a key factor in both the life and work of Hayao Miyazaki. In his films, flying represents freedom, hope, magic, and the sheer wonder of nature, but Miyazaki's family benefited financially from selling plane parts during World War Two, living in relative comfort as a direct result of the Japanese war effort. This experience seems to have given Miyazaki a very dim view of war, as seen in films like Nausicaa Valley of the Wind and Howl's Moving Castle, but it's especially germane to The Wind Rises: In telling a highly fictionalised account of the life of aircraft engineer Jiro Horikoshi (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the English-language dub) it directly addresses the life of someone who achieved success and renown for designing weapons of war, as well as the tension that exists between conscience and the desire to create something beautiful. Despite its basis in real history, The Wind Rises feels like Miyazaki's version of The Tempest; a fantastical, oblique yet deeply personal work about the craft of its creator.

Oscars 2014 Prediction Scorecard

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, I broke down the Academy Award nominations and set about predicting which films I expected to win which awards. As part of that process, I predicted that Gravity would sweep most of the technical awards and take Best Director, that Dallas Buyers Club would take home three awards, and that American Hustle, despite being nominated for ten awards, would win only a handful. I think Meatloaf has a song which is pretty pertinent to those predictions.

Let's see how I did overall.

Film Review: Nebraska (2013)

Thanks to its stark black-and-white visuals, there isn't a huge difference between the geography of the Midwest and the lines etched into Woody Grant's (Bruce Dern) face. Both evoke a quiet, consuming sadness that permeates every aspect of Alexander Payne's Nebraska, a sweetly melancholic comedy-drama in which Woody travels to Lincoln, Nebraska with his son David (Will Forte) in order to collect a million dollar prize that he believes he has won. The question of whether or not he has actually won is not a terribly important part of Nebraska; it's pretty clear to David, his brother (Bob Odenkirk) and their mother (June Squibb) that Woody hasn't won anything, and that the 'prize' is just a ploy to get people to order magazines. What is important is Woody's insistence on going to Lincoln regardless of what everyone says. Whether his desire comes from genuine belief or just senility is never entirely clear.  Again: it doesn't really matter. What matters is that it gets David and Woody in a car together, and how spending time with each other reveals and affects their relationship.

Film Review: 12 Years a Slave (2013)

When I first watched 12 Years a Slave back in November, I was so overwhelmed by the experience that I felt like I couldn't write about it. It wasn't merely that it was good, but I found the story of Solomon Northup so moving that I couldn't really put my thoughts into any cogent order. Despite that, I had no qualms putting it in my Top 20 of the year, and was pleased to see how much success the film enjoyed both critically and commercially.

Oscar Predictions 2014: The Major Awards

After running through the Technical Awards yesterday, today it's time to take a long hard look at the big awards, the ones that tend to get the most play in the press and can add a couple million more on to a film's box office tally. (And help to immortalise a film as a work of art or whatever.) First let's take a moment to remember those we've lost this past year.

Okay. In the words of God, let's get on with it.

Oscar Predictions 2014: The Technical Awards

At this point, it's pretty clear to me that the Oscars are largely meaningless to everyone except the nominees. For them, they represent the respect of their peers and greater opportunities for future work, be it in more acclaimed films or taking big paycheques for terrible superhero movies. For everyone else they're a chance to see who wore what best and to act as a reference guide for what were considered the best films of a given year, as chosen by a consensus of a relatively small, self-important group.

However, just because they don't really mean anything doesn't mean we can't have a bit of fun with them. As I have every year for the past few years, I have endeavoured to predict which films will win in each and every category. Some of these guesses are more educated than others, based either on how the awards season has played out so far, how the Academy has voted historically, or just based on what I think has the best chance of winning. It's a method that has worked fairly well in the past (apart from last year which, to use a technical term, was an absolute shit sandwich for me) and I'm hoping that it will prove itself again, or that I'll be so utterly incorrect that I can excoriate myself in my round-up on Monday.

As in previous years I've divided the various categories into the Technical Awards, which you can see below, and the Major Awards, which will run tomorrow. That's enough waffling; just because the ceremony will be super long doesn't mean this article should. Read on if you want to see what I, with my very patchy record on the subject, think will win on March 2nd.

Film Review: The Lego Movie (2014)

Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt) is a thoroughly average construction worker. Actually, average doesn't go far enough: Emmitt is consistently and thoroughly generic. He looks like everyone else in the city of Brickburg; he watches the same TV program that they do (a sitcom whose title and sole line of dialogue is "Where Are My Pants?"); he loves the one song that they play on the radio, a relentless perky electro-pop hit called "Everything is Awesome." Despite his adherence to following the instructions for living laid out by President Business (Will Ferrell), Emmet suspects that everything isn't awesome, and that maybe there's more to life than going to and from work. When he stumbles across a beautiful Master Builder named Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and a mystery block called The Piece of Resistance, Emmet is thrust into the middle of a desperate struggle to defeat President Business' plan to use a super weapon called the Kragle to destroy the world. The rebels become convinced that Emmet is the legendary Special destined to save the world. The only problem is that there is nothing remarkable about him. Like, at all.

Film Review: Her (2013)

Like many great works of science fiction, Spike Jonze's new movie Her uses its futuristic visions to examine very contemporary and human truths. In particular, it explores our changing relationship with technology, as well as the way in which technology is changing our relationships. The former theme takes the shape of the growing friendship, then gradual attraction, between Theodore Twombley (Joaquin Phoenix) and Samantha, the new Operating System he has installed on his phone (voiced with equal parts naïf-like wonder and breathless sensuality by Scarlett Johansson). It says a lot about the verisimilitude of their relationship that Theodore's name is the least credible part.

Film Review: Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013)

Less a film than a Wikipedia article come to life, Justin Chadwick's Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom suffers from the same problem that afflicts pretty much all biopics: the impossibility of condensing an entire lifetime into a few hours in a way which doesn't feel stodgy or reductive. There are exceptions, as in all things, such as Anton Corbijn's Control, about the life of Ian Curtis, where the subject lived such a short life that you can cover most everything yet still give the key points plenty of time and consideration. However, in most cases choosing to cover the entirety of a human life ends up making things seem rushed, harming it as both a work of drama and historical record.

Film Review: The Square (2013)

"As long as there is a camera, the Revolution will continue."

While these words, spoken by the revolutionary Ahmed Hassan about halfway through Jehane Noujaim's The Square, would no doubt have pissed Gil Scott-Heron off, they perfectly encapsulate the ethos of the film and the movement it documents. When opponents of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak occupied Cairo's Tahrir Square in January of 2011 in protest over, amongst other things, Mubarak's 30 years of dictatorship, cameras were there to capture it. They were also there when Mubarak resigned, when the army took over and promised elections and a new constitution, when the elections were eventually held and were won by the Muslim Brotherhood. They also captured the ideological toing-and-froing as different groups within the anti-Mubarak movement began to turn against each other. They helped capture these moments from the perspectives of people on the ground who were fighting, both literally and figuratively, for the country's future, and allowed them to disseminate information to the world. The Revolution would have happened whether it was being televised or not, but The Square suggests that it might not have been sustained without cameras there to record every joyous, wrenching, bloody moment of it.

Film Review: American Hustle (2013)

There's a scene in David O. Russell's previous film, Silver Linings Playbook, in which all the major figures in Pat Solitano's (Bradley Cooper) life finally collide in one room. His feisty dance partner/love interest, his parents and one of his best friends are all thrown together so that they can hash out their differences, and gradually reach a point from which they can progress to the finale. It's a crucial scene, one that shuffles all the different relationships and fundamentally changes the stakes of the story, but it's also the worst scene in the entire movie; it lacks any particular focus, and feels like the early stages of an improv session in which the actors are trying to find their way to a conclusion. It has plenty of energy, but it's energy that is being fired off in every direction at once.

Ed's Top 20 Films of 2013

A still from Pain & Gain, a film which will not be included in this countdown.

Since 2013 is almost done, and since I've now run out of time to cram in any more films, it seems only appropriate to look back on what has been a really quite stellar 12 months and reflect on the very highest of the highlights. As I said, this year has been pretty fantastic for cinema, and it has been one of the few years where drawing up a Top 20, which sometimes seems like a bit of stretch to fill, feels somewhat inadequate. As such, I've thrown a whole heap of honorable mentions in at the end, because it would be a shame to leave out films just because they aren't as great as some of the others.

This is by no means a definitive list, since I wasn't able to see every film that I would have wanted to, but it's a good one, and it reflects the stuff that I really loved this year. Here's to a great 2013, and the hope that 2014 is anywhere near as bountiful.

Film Review: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a man of many passions and interests, chief amongst them being sex, doing enough drugs to incapacitate the population of Manhattan, and money. So much money; hire midgets so you can throw them at a giant bullseye money. As a stock broker who loses his job at a reputable (by Wall Street standards) firm, gets filthy rich by conning people into buying super cheap shares on which he gets a high commission, then sets up shop with his business partner (Jonah Hill), he is able to live a lifestyle of cartoonish excess. But as profits soar and parties get ever more extravagant, Belfort starts to attract the attention of an FBI agent (Kyle Chandler) who doggedly pursues him and his associates. But when you're obscenely rich, what does it matter if you're breaking the law?

Film Review: Upstream Color (2013)

Considering that he has only made two films, each a decade apart, and considering that those two films are so radically different in style, tone and composition, it's hard to really get a sense of who Shane Carruth is as an artist. As the writer, director, actor, editor and composer of Primer, released to much acclaim back in 2004, and now Upstream Color, he's carved out a niche as a creator of fiercely unique science fiction films, ones which use heady concepts to explore the raw heart of humanity. Yet the difference in scope and artistry between the two films is so staggering that they almost feel like they were made by different men. In a sense, they were, since everyone becomes a different person with the passage of time, but even taking that into consideration, it's tough to determine just what it is that defines Carruth's vision as a filmmaker.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 46 - 2013 Round-up

Well, another year has passed, and like everyone else on the Internet, we at Shot/Reverse Shot have decided to sit down and ask ourselves the question, "2013, what was all that about, then?"

In pursuit of an answer, Joe Gastineau and myself talk about the big news stories of the year, such as the proliferation of non-stories about imaginary Star Wars casting, the "Marvelisation" of cinema, changing modes of distribution, and why everyone hated Zach Braff's Kickstarter. We then get into specifics and talk about the most disappointing films of the year, why The Lone Ranger is secretly pretty good, and which films were so terrible they made us wonder if cinema is all it's cracked up to be. We round out the episode and the year by revealing our Top Ten films of 2013. It's a pretty great list, though that's as much due to 2013 being a pretty great year for films as it was us having amazing taste. So take a bow, 2013!

Thanks to everyone who has listened to the show this year. It's been an experimental time for us as we got to grips with recording on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and we're still trying to do new things with the show and generally make it as good as we possibly can. The feedback we receive from listeners is hugely important to us, as is the idea that anyone would listen to us in the first place. Thanks again, and here's to another good one in 2014.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the latter, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.