Movie Review: Nine (2009)

A musical drama, Nine explores middle age creative block in a story about a film director and the women in his life.

Rome, 1965. Famed Italian director Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) is supposed to start shooting his next movie, but has no script and no ideas. Haunted by the failure of his two most recent films, he escapes to an Anzio hotel to try and find inspiration. He lies to his wife Luisa (Marion Cotillard) and is joined by his mistress Carla (Penélope Cruz). Costume designer Liliane (Judi Dench) tries to help, while Guido has visions of his mother (Sophia Loren) and memories of his childhood, when he was entranced by prostitute Saraghina (Fergie).

After reporter Stephanie (Kate Hudson) tries to seduce Guido, the last opportunity for a creative boost may be his regular leading lady Claudia Jenssen (Nicole Kidman). But with Luisa's patience with her philandering husband finally running out, salvaging Guido's latest project will prove difficult.

An adaptation of the play by Arthur Kopit which in turn was inspired by Fellini's 8½ (1963), Nine enjoys a stellar cast but is hampered by uninspired music and a consistently dour tone. The songs by Maury Yeston feature lyrics where clunky competes with obvious, and while Rob Marshall directs with panache, the script co-written by Michael Tolkin and Anthony Minghella gives him limited material to work with.

The film is entirely bogged down by Guido's doldrums and never generates narrative momentum. The tone is set early, the film structured as one-woman-at-a-time singing about her influence over the deeply flawed and egotistical director. Mistress, wife, confidant, mother, prostitute-from-childhood, muse: nothing helps him gain traction on his latest project, but he never misses an opportunity to light another cigarette.

The cast members bring a mix of interesting accents to the singing, for example Day-Lewis singing in an Italian clip, raising curious questions as to why anyone would sing in a language other than their mother tongue when entirely alone.

But despite several structural weaknesses, Nine benefits from a sparkling cast in good form. Guido is probably one of Day-Lewis' easier characters to embody, but he brings his reliable depth and dedication to the role. The many women rotating in his orbit are brought to life by energetic performances from Penélope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, and Judi Dench, although none of them receive substantial screen time.

In an awkward role obviously bolted on to the movie adaptation, Kate Hudson appears unsure what her character is supposed to be doing, but delivers Cinema Italiano with plenty of verve. The better musical numbers also include Cruz's seductive A Call From The Vatican and Cotillard's angry Take It All.

Nine carries a haughty self-rating, but is more of a middling effort.

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Movie Review: Allied (2016)

A World War Two spy drama and romance, Allied features a stellar Marion Cotillard performance but gets everything else wrong.

It's 1942, and Canadian Wing Commander Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) parachutes into Morocco and connects with Free French resistance agent Marianne Beauséjour (Cotillard) in Casablanca. They pretend to be husband and wife but fall in love for real as they mingle with Nazi officials and plot a dangerous assassination mission. After escaping with their lives they relocate to London and get married, and one year later their baby Anna is born during a German bombing raid.

One year further on, Max receives the shocking news from British intelligence services that Marianne is suspected of being a Nazi spy. He is ordered to feed her fake intelligence to irrefutably prove she is a traitor. But Max is determined to prove his wife's real identity on his own terms, and attempts a dangerous mission to France to connect with her former resistance comrades.

Directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Steven Knight, Allied is the sort of movie that Hollywood used to excel at. Two top stars, a respected director, romance, drama, some action and a backdrop of a grand and just war. That Allied is comprehensively botched is a sad condemnation of a film industry now utterly geared towards identikit superhero blockbusters, endless sequels and small-scale independent films, with nothing in between.

An attempted mix of elements from Mr. And Mrs. Smith and Casablanca, Allied is not remotely close to capturing the magic of either film. With dollops of unnecessary CGI deployed in all the wrong places, Allied looks fake and glossy from the outset. The emphasis appears to be on spectacular custom-made outfits, and forgotten in the pursuit of glitz is the setting of a world at war. The grit, grime, tension and desperation of an existential global conflict is absent.

The film zooms in too close to Max and Marianne. At every opportunity Knight fails in creating any contextual tension. The guns are blazing and bodies are dropping in Casablanca before the objective is explained, and why the mission is even important is never broached. Back in London, again the film incompetently neglects to reveal both the dangers Marianne is facing or the strategic importance of the military intelligence being compromised. And a dumbfoundingly inconsequential lesbian relationship is thrown into the film for no apparent reason.

Elsewhere, basic history and fundamental principles of military discipline are ignored. The battle of Britain ended in 1941. Here German bombers are somehow still blitzing London in 1944. And on a couple of occasions Max is given the freedom of a military airfield to commandeer a fighter jet for unsanctioned missions. After a fairly major skirmish with the Germans in occupied Dieppe, how exactly Max escapes both the Nazis and a military inquisition back home is deemed unimportant.

Allied is left with Marion Cotillard rising above the dross to deliver a delightful performance as a spy, a lover, a wife, a mother  and maybe a spy again. Compared to the wooden Pitt, she emerges as the one source of delicate warmth. Allied is a mission gone bad, but at least one of the agents is indeed special.

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Movie Review: Blood Ties (2013)

A good brother - bad brother cop drama, Blood Ties features a superlative cast but is undermined by an overwhelming lack of originality and chemistry.

It's the 1970s in New York City, and police officer Frank Pierzynski (Billy Crudup) arrests criminal Anthony Scarfo (Matthias Schoenaerts) and reignites a romantic relationship with Scarfo's wife Vanessa (Zoe Saldana). Meanwhile Frank's brother Chris (Clive Owen) is released from prison and despite an uneasy brotherly dynamic, Frank tries to help Chris go straight. Chris accepts a job at an auto garage, reconnects with his wife Monica (Marion Cotillard), and establishes a new relationship with Natalie (Mila Kunis).

Frank and Chris were brought up by their father Leon (James Caan) after their mother abandoned the family. Leon is now physically ailing and just wants the brothers to get along. But Chris is soon sucked back into a life of crime and gets involved in gangland murders and armed heists, placing Frank in the awkward position of having to pursue his brother. Meanwhile Scarfo is stewing in jail, plotting revenge against Frank.

Directed by Guillaume Canet as a remake of French film in turn adapted from a French novel, Blood Ties labours its way towards offering nothing new. All the ingredients are there, from the gritty 1970s New York setting to the conflicted characters living in the shadows of emotional damage built up over a lifetime of disappointments and betrayals. But the film lands with a dull thud of inertness, the performers almost seeming disinterested, the script never building a head of steam, and a general sense of ennui suffocates the movie.

Which is unfortunate, since the cast is full of talent. Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Zoe Saldana, Marion Cotillard, Mila Kunis, James Caan and Matthias Schoenaerts should enliven any film. But the screenplay, co-written by Canet and James Gray, is unable to locate an adequate spark. The interactions remain dull and subdued, Frank and Chris too often squabbling, sulking and wrestling like children. Scarfo hisses stereotypical evil and the women suffer most in being unable to justify why they are hanging around this assortment of losers. James Caan tries his best to inject some dynamism but errs on the side of overcooking the father trying too hard to make up for the flaws of the past.

The few action scenes are well executed, and Canet does succeed in capturing the spirit of a grainy, crime-infested New York filled with over-sized cars transporting villains from one sleaze-infested neighbourhood to another. Blood Ties has the look, but it only serves as reminder that almost everything else is missing.

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Movie Review: Two Days, One Night (2014)

A drama about economic survival, Two Days, One Night explores the thin personal and civil strands that weave a society. A superlative Marion Cotillard performance helps to create gripping viewing.

It's Friday in a small suburban Belgian town, and factory worker Sandra (Cotillard) receives bad news: her sixteen crew mates at a cash-strapped solar panel manufacturing plant have voted that she lose her job so that they can each keep a €1,000 bonus. Sandra, a married mother of two, was vulnerable because she was off work suffering from depression, and her absence proved to her boss Dumont that the work could be done with one less person. Sandra's friend Juliette helps convince Dumont to hold another, this time secret, vote on Monday morning.

Prodded by her husband Manu (Fabrizio Rongione), the reluctant Sandra sets out to talk to all 16 of her work colleagues over the weekend, pleading with them to consider voting to save her job. The response will be varied, sometimes unexpected, and Sandra will discover plenty about herself and her community.

Directed by the Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Two Days, One Night is an engrossing character study that expands outwards from Sandra and into her surrounding ecosystem. With a strong focus on the dynamics of a working class neighbourhood, the film asks questions about the individual and the collective, personal needs versus social good, and the surprising limits and opportunities that reside within relationships, both personal and professional.

The Dardennes establish the premise quickly, and then settle down into a pattern of Sandra approaching each co-worker in turn, pleading for their vote, and then an interlude where the most recent interaction either raises her spirits or crushes her psyche. While some repetitiveness creeps in, the film keeps each encounter fresh, Sandra never knowing what response she is going to get, her already emotionally fragile, pill-popping state ready to either shatter or regroup according to the decisions of near-strangers.

About two thirds of the way through, Sandra's quest takes on an added dimension. There is a touching scene in the car with Manu where she smiles for the first time, discovering more about herself than she wanted to know. Then a co-worker springs a surprise and takes an emotional and financial risk of her own: a new, unexpected bond of friendship is forged. Sandra's appeal for collegial sympathy will have mixed and unintended consequences, none more important than her understanding of what emotional fulfillment looks like.

Marion Cotillard own the entire film, the cameras fully fixated on her in each scene, her acting finding a magical sweet spot where extreme anxiety and delicate determination join hands, both looking to score a win over the other.

Two Days, One Night is a stark look at the simple economics of life: a bonus or a colleague, the relative value varies according to each individual, but all the ripples are nevertheless felt throughout the same small pool.

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The Movies Of Marion Cotillard

All movies starring Marion Cotillard and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Big Fish (2003)

Public Enemies (2009)

Nine (2009)

Inception (2010)

Midnight In Paris (2011)

Contagion (2011)

Blood Ties (2013)

Two Days, One Night (2014)

Allied (2016)

Lee (2023)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Midnight In Paris (2011)

A fantasy romance inspired by the confluence of wistful time and divine place, Midnight In Paris finds Woody Allen at his best, crafting a love letter to a city rich with passion and history.

Successful Hollywood screenwriter Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) still dreams of becoming a respected book author. On vacation in Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams), Gil finds himself inspired by the city's rich heritage and starts to muse about living there permanently, an idea that Inez dismisses. With Inez enjoying sightseeing and partying with pompous professor Paul Bates (Michael Sheen) and his wife Carol (Nina Arianda), Gil starts to take midnight walks on his own.

He stumbles into an alternate reality of Paris in the 1920s, inhabited by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. They interact with him naturally, inviting him to parties and Stein even offering to review a draft of his novel. Gil moves back and forth between Paris of today with Inez in the daytime and the 1920s on his own after midnight, where he eventually meets Pablo Picasso's lover, the mysteriously attractive Adriana (Marion Cotillard). She is also seeking her true destiny in the company of her contemporaries, and an impossible romance flickers to life.

Midnight In Paris celebrates the city's charming magic, and toys with the nostalgia of the past always glowing brighter than the reality of the present. It is among Woody Allen's best films, finding the sweet spot where his favourite themes intersect: troubled love enriched by an enchanting cityscape prompting an examination of a man's path in life.

The opening montage, showing iconic Parisian scenes, noticeably lingers on for a good minute longer than the usual introduction, Allen sending the message that the city is one of his main characters. And throughout the film, Allen bathes the Paris of the past and the present, whether at night or during the day, with warm, comforting hues dominated by reds and yellows. Even the rainfall feels mild and soothing, while the numerous bistros emit an ever welcoming glow at all hours.

And Gil is drawn into this mystique, finding in the city the perfect match for his romantic soul. Gil is most at home when walking the streets of Paris alone, and he gradually realizes that his connection with the city will define his happiness much more so than his relationship with Inez.

Allen, who also wrote the screenplay, does not bother to explain Gil's frequent sojourns into the past, allowing the time shifts to be as natural as the human imagination. The theme, however, is clear. The glorious past is an inspiration for the present and the future, but pining to live there is an emotional cul-de-sac. The past is always the present for its generation, with the business of living and loving a constant and dominant requirement. Wistful sentimentality is what yesterday feels like, but only from today's vantage point.

Midnight In Paris is populated by a perfect cast, Wilson creating in Gil an articulate man still seeking his place in life. McAdams breaks away from her traditional perkiness to provide Inez with a pushy edge, a modern woman trampling over her man's tender vulnerabilities. Marion Cotillard ghosts into the movie as Gil's muse, his most direct expression of love for the past, and also the signpost for the future.

Michael Sheen, Carla Bruni and Léa Seydoux have small but memorable roles in Paris of the present, while Adrien Brody (Salvador Dali), Kathy Bates (Gertrude Stein), Corey Stoll (Ernest Hemingway) and Tom Hiddleston (F. Scott Fitzgerald) have a ball bringing the past to life. Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Degas, Matisse, T.S. Eliot and Luis Buñuel are other celebrities of previous eras that cross paths in the dreamy mists of the night.

Embroidered with delicate humour, Midnight In Paris is a whimsical masterpiece.

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Movie Review: Contagion (2011)

A matter-of-fact medical thriller that enhances its impact by avoiding melodramatics, Contagion is an only slight extrapolation of the recent real-world threats caused by the SARS and H1N1 viruses.

Married businesswoman Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow), on a trip to Hong Kong and Macao, contracts an unknown virus. She infects an illicit lover while on a stopover in Chicago before flying home to Minneapolis. Beth dies after suffering violent seizures, as does her young son. Beth's husband Mitch (Matt Damon) is quarantined but proves to be immune to the virus, soon named MEV-1. The virus spreads rapidly throughout Minneapolis, Chicago, and China, and is soon a global threat.

At the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta, Dr. Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) and his team try to identify the virus, the first step towards developing a vaccine. Cheever sends Dr. Mears (Kate Winslett) to Minneapolis to track back the source and warn those who have come in contact with Beth; but Dr. Mears soon succumbs and joins the rapidly lengthening list of victims. Dr. Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) of the CDC gets help from Professor Sussman (Elliott Gould) in San Francisco and finally isolates the virus, triggering the frantic rush to develop and test a vaccine.

At the World Health Organization, Dr. Orantes (Marion Cotillard) traces the origins of the outbreak and travels to China. As she gets close to identifying the source, local authorities hold her hostage to ensure that their worst-affected villages receive the vaccine quickly once it is developed. In the meantime, borderline crackpot and pandemic blogger Alan (Jude Law) spreads misinformation and fans the flames of a conspiracy and government cover-up that exist only in his head, confusing the public and adding to the stress of the scientists trying to counter the threat of the lethal super bug. It is finally Dr. Hextall who has to take a calculated risk, if humanity is going to have a chance to turn the tide of annihilation .

Director Steven Soderbergh approaches the Scott Z. Burns script with the precision of a skilled laboratory technician handling toxic material: Contagion's structure most closely resembles a serious documentary, with the filmmakers fortunate enough to have cameras at strategic hot spots as the virus spreads. There are no car chases, evil conspirators, explosions or theatrical deaths: just scientists frantically trying to understand and then control a brutal microscopic foe, and humanity at large struggling to cope.

The ensemble cast performs with uncontaminated competency, Laurence Fishburne coming closest to having a leading role as the fatherly Dr. Cheever, trying to care for his employees while leading the efforts to get ahead of the virus-caused carnage. Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Elliott Gould and Jude Law are all appropriately serious, angry or both as the disease ravages their lives, while Gwyneth Paltrow gets the only carefree role, as Beth is blissfully oblivious to her role in triggering a global nightmare.

In aiming for a sombre chronicling of a mammoth tragedy, Contagion sacrifices any individual emotional or theatrical high points. While this is a mostly welcome departure from the typical Hollywood approach, the film does frequently resemble an elongated nightly newscast, and Contagion becomes an extension of the reality that movies are expected to distract from. The bugs may be deadly, but they would be more memorable if their fictional battle with the humans was as entertaining as it was dangerous.

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Movie Review: Public Enemies (2009)

A potent mix of elements from Bonnie And Clyde (1967) and The Untouchables (1987), Public Enemies never quite reaches the same heights as classic crime movie dramas, but is nevertheless an often compelling yarn about charismatic bad guys, their dames, and the g-men out to get them.

Public Enemies is based on the true story of notorious criminal John Dillinger, who was designated public enemy number one in the 1930s for a string of daring Depression-era bank robberies and prison escapes. A media darling and something of a folk hero for treating customers with respect as he held up the bank managers, Dillinger (Johnny Depp) falls in love with Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) without slowing down his often violent crime spree.

Under the growing influence of a young J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), an FBI task force led by Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) is created to track down Dillinger and his associates. Dillinger repeatedly embarrasses the police and the FBI by slipping through their fingers before he is eventually betrayed, cornered and killed outside a Chicago movie theatre.

Director Michael Mann puts the hefty 140 minutes of running time to good use and finds a reasonably satisfying balance between intense action sequences, including prison escapes, bank robberies, and hideaway shoot-outs, and the development of the three main characters. Depp succeeds in giving Dillinger some soul, Bale provides Purvis with grim determination, and Cotillard captures the wide-eyed attraction of women who have nothing to criminals who offer a life of unimaginable adventure.

Public Enemies would have benefited from a purposeful trimming of the supporting cast. The film occasionally stumbles when numerous secondary characters get in the way. Many Dillinger associates clutter the screen and are given little time to breathe (often literally). Criminals Baby Face Nelson, Tommy Carroll, Red Hamilton, Pretty Boy Floyd, Ed Shouse, Pete Pierpont, Charles Makley and Alvin Karpis are just some of the fellow gangsters who make an appearance in the character-heavy script (co-written by Mann), but they do little except snarl and fire their weapons. On the other side of the law, another half dozen agents form Bale's posse, and they generally just appear earnest and follow instructions.

The cinematography, costume design and set design succeed in bringing to life a vibrant 1930s setting grand enough to absorb the unfolding larger than life drama, but with more emphasis on glitz and glamour than depression.

Public Enemies has epic ambitions, and while the human focus is spread too thin and works only when attention is maintained on the main characters, the action-oriented scenes live up to expectations, exuberantly spraying thrills from the barrels of smoking Tommy guns.

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Movie Review: Inception (2010)

A near-future science fiction thriller that is a breath of fresh air in terms of new ideas, writer and director Christopher Nolan demonstrates in Inception that originality is alive and well, and action movies need be neither derivative nor interpretations of obscure comics.

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) specializes in modern industrial espionage: stealing ideas by invading the dreams of executives. Dom has unresolved emotional issues related to the death of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard); as a result her image frequently appears and disrupts his progress at critical points in his invasive work.

Businessman Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe) hires Dom for a special assignment: conduct an inception by invading the dreams of rival executive Robert Fisher (Cillian Murphy) and planting an idea that will benefit Mr. Saito's business interests. An inception is the opposite of a theft, and is rarely successful, but Cobb assembles a crack team to pull it off. His associates include architecture student Ariadne (Ellen Page), a couple of other expert thieves, and a chemist specializing in dream-related sedation.

The inception operation will require an elaborate dream within a dream within a dream structure, and the whole team may be forever lost in limbo if the plan fails. An extra complication for Dom is dealing once and for all with his emotions surrounding Mal's death.

Inception is both challenging and complex to follow, but in an era of cookie-cutter sequelitis, a movie that demands attention is a good thing. Nolan spent 10 years developing the script, and it shows. Inception has an elaborate structure resembling Matryoshka nesting dolls, with fine threads connecting events happening in several dream dimensions at once. Knowing what is real and what is a dream is a challenge for both the characters and the viewers.

The main heist involves three dream levels, and when things go wrong an unscheduled descent into a fourth dream level becomes necessary. All events in each of the levels are interrelated, and it's not an easy task to keep all the action straight. Nolan pulls this off with a combination of slick editing and sheer bravado, helped by a dedicated Leonardo DiCaprio performance.

The movie does suffer from some routine, prolonged, and unconvincing shoot-out sequences, as Dom's team unexpectedly encounter heavily armed defenders in the dreams of Robert Fisher. The sequences revealing Dom's history with his wife Mal are better, and that is where the film finds it's emotional high points.

Inception is a showcase for some incredible modern movie special effects, but in addition to being justified as part of various dream worlds, they are placed at the service of a fascinating story and engaging characters. Demonstrating an appreciation for old-school film elements, Nolan also brings in Michael Caine for a few scenes to add acting depth as DiCaprio's father-in-law.

Inception inspires awe and head-scratching in equal measures, and the best proof of its impact is that it demands to be viewed again, as soon as it ends.

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