Movie Review: Unthinkable (2010)

Genre: Torture Drama  

Director: Gregor Jordan  

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Carrie-Anne Moss, Michael Sheen, Stephen Root  

Running Time: 97 minutes  

Synopsis: Terrorist Yusuf (Michal Sheen), a former member of Delta Force, releases a video claiming to have armed three nuclear devices for detonation in different US cities within three days, but does not reveal the locations. He then allows himself to be arrested. The FBI's Agent Helen Brody (Carrie-Anne Moss) and a CIA black-ops operative known only as H (Samuel L. Jackson) are recruited to interrogate Yusuf. H is an expert at brutal torture techniques to extract information at any cost, horrifying Helen. Meanwhile, Yusuf is well-prepared for his ordeal.

What Works Well: The Peter Woodward script is charged with the debate around the efficacy of torture when countless lives are at stake. The torture scenes are suitably disturbing, and the performances by Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Sheen descend to the depths of human cruelty, starting from different origins but arriving at the same depraved destination.

What Does Not Work As Well: The balance between plot drivers and abuse tactics is never achieved. Director Gregor Jordan invests too much repetitive time in the torture chamber, well after the point is made that H and Yusuf are two sides of the same no-limits coin. Yusuf's motivations and demands are barely sketched-in, leaving a hollow space where fuel for his fire ought to reside. In a world without rules, Carrie-Anne Moss struggles to convince as the voice of reason and basic morality.

Conclusion: Plenty of pain for no appreciable gain.

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Movie Review: Frost/Nixon (2008)

A drama and character study, Frost/Nixon explores a battle of wits between a television personality and a disgraced politician. The duel provides a surprisingly potent foundation for a captivating narrative.

After President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) resigns in 1974 as a result of the Watergate scandal, British celebrity talk show host David Frost (Michael Sheen) audaciously requests an interview. With Nixon now decamped to a California villa with an entourage of loyalists, his publicist Irving "Swifty" Lazar (Toby Jones) eventually agrees to the interview request in exchange for $600,000.

In preparation for the four two-hour taped sessions, Frost convenes a team of advisors including producer John Birt (Matthew Macfayden) and reporters/researchers Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt) and James Reston (Sam Rockwell). But to Frost's surprise the major television networks pass on the opportunity to buy the rights to air the interview, forcing him to front all the expenses and in a scramble to find sponsors. The tapings start in 1977, with Nixon confident he can bat away any controversial questions and Frost eager to extract an acknowledgement of wrong doing from the disgraced former President.

Peter Morgan adapts his stage play for the big screen and succeeds at the arduous task of transforming a political interview featuring two egotistical characters into accessible drama. Without fully overcoming the suspicion of overblown importance, director Ron Howard squeezes tension from the quest to seek something resembling an apology, or maybe just a moment of human vulnerability, from the reviled figure of Richard Nixon. The drama works thanks in large part to Frank Langella draping the Nixon persona over his broad shoulders and projecting a fascinating combination of arrogance, denial and smarts.

Howard stages the interview preparations as the equivalent of two boxers training for a championship bout. Advisors, sparring sessions, commercial terms, sponsors, personalty analyses and likely points of attack and defence are charted and debated, occupying the film's first two thirds. Concurrently the two personalities are fleshed out, Frost inexperienced as a hard-nosed interviewer but with a megawatt smile and enough charm to light-up a studio, Nixon a wounded giant of a man still believing himself the smartest person in a room full of enablers, and yet to fully come to terms with his legacy.

Once the interviews start, the bout appears to be a mismatch. Drawing on decades of experience Nixon unsettles his inquisitor and turns every answer into a self-serving monologue, Frost unable to interject and pinned deep into his chair by the former President's oratory barrage. The success or failure of Frost's attempt to create compelling television hinges on the fourth and final two-hour interview session centred on Watergate, and the showman realizes it really is show time, only this time he has to work for it.

The outcome is a combination of history and dramatic licence, Howard and Langella doing enough to register a moment in television history entrenching the medium's power and potential.

In addition to Matthew Macfayden, Toby Jones, Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell, the cast also includes Kevin Bacon as Nixon's chief of staff Jack Brennan and Rebecca Hall as Frost's girlfriend Caroline. The supporting actors are all suitably lively but rarely venture beyond basic characterizations.

The production exudes quality and courage in tackling cerebral subject matter with complex protagonists. The topics are history and politics, but Frost/Nixon is intrinsically all about pushing risks to the point of career-defining success or spectacular failure.



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Movie Review: Brad's Status (2017)

A middle age crisis drama, Brad's Status explores issues of deep seated insecurity through the story of a father accompanying his son on a trip to assess college options.

In Sacramento, Brad Sloan (Ben Stiller) is well into middle age, and sure that he has been an underachiever in life. He runs a small non-profit agency, is married to government worker Melanie (Jenna Fischer), and their son Troy (Austin Abrams) is a budding musician and about to graduate from high school.

But Brad constantly compares his relative lack of success to the perceived wealth, fame and happiness achieved by his college friends Craig (Michael Sheen), Jason (Luke Wilson) and Billy (Jermaine Clement). Craig worked at the White House and is now an in-demand best-selling author and television political pundit. Jason built enormous wealth running a hedge fund, and Billy retired early to a life of leisure in the Caribbean after selling his technology firm.

Brad accompanies Troy to Boston for a college tour, and learns that Troy has a realistic chance of being accepted to Harvard. His burst of pride is punctured when a date mix-up results in Troy missing his interview. Brad struggles to decide whether or not to call upon Craig to pull some strings and open the right doors for Troy, and as the trip progresses he reassesses his life and the complex relationship with his past friends.

Brad's Status is over-narrated and ploughs familiar terrain related to keeping up with the Joneses, the grass always appearing greener on the other side of the fence, and the creeping realization that life's back-half is a plateau if not a downward spiral of mediocrity. Yet in the hands of writer and director Mike White, the film is a worthwhile journey into the stressed mind of a father flirting with depression.

Brad has built up his college friends' lives into some sort of wart-free utopia, all of them successful beyond imagination, leaving him as the only group member wallowing in middle class oblivion. And now his perceived failure means he is no longer invited to their social gatherings, whereas in the past he was the glue holding the crew together. The film avoids hammering the role social media plays in inflating insecurities, but the message is unmistakable.

Brad enjoys the luxury of a stable marriage with the terrifically supportive Melanie, runs his own meaningful business promoting good causes, and his son is well adjusted and may be musically gifted enough to gain admission to a top college. Instead of celebrating his achievements Brad emotionally flounders by measuring his life short against others. White prominently exposes Brad's sour attitude and negative outlook as his biggest obstacle, and does not shy away from presenting immaturity and self-directed degradation as harmful fuel for angst.

Within the prevailing sense of emotional gloom the trip to Boston serves to build a bond between father and son. Brad has clearly neglected to care much about Troy's progress, and in his eagerness to catch up he defaults to many ill-advised moves, often saying and doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Troy remains impressively patient, poking back at his dad when needed but generally helping his father awaken to the world of young adults by being true to himself, a trait obviously inherited from his well-grounded mother.

The trip also provides unexpected opportunities for Brad to get back in touch with his college buddies, especially celebrity author Craig. A closer look at his friends' lives reveals all is not what it seems, and again White makes Brad real: knowingly or not he holds on tight to his resentment, botching more than one opportunity to rebuild meaningful connections.

Ben Stiller is in his comfort zone portraying an average man wrestling with restlessness, and Austin Abrams is equally impressive as a son refreshingly free of irony fluttering his way out of the nest.

Brad's Status is middling. He has more than he knows, but knowing is a big part of thriving.

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Movie Review: The Queen (2006)

A royal family drama inspired by events in the days following the death of Princess Diana, The Queen is an exceptional study of leadership in conflict.

In May 1997, young and energetic Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) is elected as Britain's new Prime Minister. His first meeting with Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) is rather stiff. On August 31, the enormously popular Diana, Princess of Wales, the former wife of the Queen's son Prince Charles (Alex Jennings), is killed in a car crash in Paris.

With Blair eloquently eulogizing Diana as the People's Princess, a great outpouring of public grief follows, most visible through an ever-growing sea of condolence flowers placed at the Buckingham Palace gates.The Royal family decide to remain at their Balmoral summer residence, and the Queen refuses to acknowledge Diana's death in any way. Behind the scenes Charles prods Blair to intervene, but egged on by her gruff husband Prince Philip (James Cromwell) and the equally out of touch Queen Mother (Sylvia Syms), the Queen will not easily be swayed by Blair's charms.

Written by Peter Morgan and directed by Stephen Frears, The Queen is a fictionalized account of what turned into a surprising crisis for the monarchy. In its entire storied history Britain had simply never dealt with the death of popular princess who had publicly shunned the royal family. Stitching together the publicly known sequence of events, The Queen infiltrates the private rooms of the royal family and the prime minister's house and offices to fill in the blanks. In the process Morgan humanizes the people behind the titles, bringing them down to the real world where exceptionally difficult decisions have to be made.

The film offers up Tony Blair wearing a Newcastle United jersey at home, listening to wife Cherie (Helen McCrory) going on about her anti-monarchist ideas and preparing family meals. And at Balmoral, Prince Philip, besides affectionately calling the Queen "cabbage", expresses 19th century haughty, classist and borderline homophobic attitudes, completely detached from modern British society. And when the Queen turns to her mother, the advice is even more stick-to-your-guns tone deaf.

The narrative is built on remarkable tension generated by two diametrically opposite impressions of the same woman. By 1997 the Queen regarded Diana as a publicity-seeking traitor and adulteress, allowing her to comfortably fall back on stiff-upper-lip traditions of grieving in private and showing no emotion. Helen Mirren is at her best embodying a woman guided by 45 years on the throne, convinced to her core she knows what is right.

Except that for the British public Diana was the commoner who tasted royal life and turned away in disgust, and used her celebrity to globally champion important social causes from AIDS treatment to the abolition of landmines. Frears uses television coverage from the days after Diana's death to capture the unprecedented outpouring of national grief.

Bridging the divide becomes a matter of national urgency. The Queen's cold stance stoked anti-monarchist sentiments, as the absent and aloof royals became a symbol of everything that went wrong in Diana's life. The Queen presents Blair and Prince Charles as much more attuned to what the nation needed, and grappling with the dilemma of changing the deep-seated opinion of the reigning monarch.

In a series of brilliantly written phone calls, Blair gathers up the courage to represent the people's wishes, the Queen listens politely and fires back with the supremacy of her traditions. The Queen is a fascinating clash of two leaders who may both be right, and the search for a climbdown free of triumphalism to help a nation grieve.

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Movie Review: Home Again (2017)

A lightweight drama, Home Again offers a slice of life triggered by a weird premise with nowhere to go.

Recently separated 40-year old Alice Kinney (Reese Witherspoon) relocates her life and two young daughters from New York back to Los Angeles, and settles in at the estate of her late father, celebrated independent filmmaker John Kinney. Up-and-coming young filmmakers and friends Harry (Pico Alexander), George (Jon Rudnitsky), and Teddy (Nat Wolff) are in town to negotiate a feature-length film deal after the breakout success of their short. Harry is the director, George the writer and Teddy (George's brother) is an actor, and all three are in their twenties.

The trio meet Alice while partying at a club, and thanks to Alice's mom Lillian (Candice Bergen) they end up staying at the Kinney guesthouse. Alice and Harry are drawn to each other and start an unlikely relationship despite the age difference. The three guys also make friends with Alice's daughters, writer George helping older daughter Isabel break out of her shell. Things appear to be going smoothly until Alice and Harry hit a big bump in their relationship, and Alice's husband Austen (Michael Sheen), a record producer, shows up and tries to reclaim her love.

Directed and written by Hallie Meyers-Shyer (daughter of  Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer), Home Again exists solely as a star vehicle of sorts for Reese Witherspoon. The concept of a mother entering middle age enjoying the attention of three hunky and remarkably well behaved young men appears to have been hatched over afternoon cocktails, and that's as far as the plot goes. Once Harry, George and Teddy move in with Alice and her daughters, the film is caught in the open somewhere between the fields of bland and the plains of predictable.

At least Meyers-Sheyer does not sell out to cheap laughs, nor does she veer towards melodrama. But a whole lot of vanilla nothingness is also not a good place to land. It proves difficult to create any sort of compelling viewing out of a situation where Alice secures free childcare, free sex and free handymen services. The romance elements are more of a fling, the intrusion of husband Austen as the mood disruptor is almost painfully awful and ends with an atrociously juvenile punch-up. At least the sub-plot about Harry and his friends navigating the Hollywood sharks who find a way to ruin every good idea offers some welcome wit and sarcasm.

Witherspoon saves as many scenes as she can and is never less than watchable. The two young actresses who play her daughters, Lola Flanery and Eden Grace Redfield, are cute and capable. Candice Bergen gets a couple of good moments but is generally wasted. The three actors who portray the young filmmakers have no opportunity to rise above the status of props.

Home Again seeks familiar comforts only to stumble into stale surroundings.

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Movie Review: Passengers (2016)

A touching science fiction romance grappling with human-scaled dilemmas, Passengers is both visually gorgeous and deeply satisfying.

In the distant future, the massive spaceship Avalon is traveling in deep space to the Homestead II planet, carrying 5,000 colonists. The journey is supposed to take 120 years with the passengers asleep in hibernation pods. A mishap occurs when the spacecraft strikes an asteroid, and passenger Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), a mechanical engineer, is awakened 90 years early. Unable to reenter hibernation, Jim has the massive craft to himself as he faces the reality of a lonely existence and a lonelier death to come. With the android bartender Arthur (Michael Sheen) as his only companion, he drops into a severe depression.

Jim becomes infatuated with young writer Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), another passenger in deep sleep. Desperate for companionship, he finally makes the difficult decision to wake her up, pretending that it's another mishap. Once she gets over the shock, Aurora and Jim do fall in love, but there is plenty of trouble ahead for the couple and all the passengers on board.

Directed by Morten Tyldum, Passengers is a deep space science fiction adventure focussed on down-to-earth issues. The film soars with a rare beauty, but never loses sight of it central premise, and explores themes of loneliness, depression, and stalking. The script by Jon Spaihts ventures into the fundamental territory of the true purpose of life in the face of death, and what it means to aspire towards lofty goals only to be forced by external factors into essential, wrenching re-orientations.

The film's pervasive theme is about reacting to dreams rudely knocked out of orbit. Jim's planned life is eternally altered by a technical glitch; he can only rage against the machine, an ultimately unsatisfying pursuit. Aurora is awakened by Jim, and will have to first get over the shock of a future death in space; and then confront the truth that another human had intervened in her trajectory and condemned her to a life and death she never imagined. She can rage against another human, but in the abject loneliness of space, to what end?

The film looks magnificent. Rarely has space or a human-imagined space craft looked more beautiful, and the 3D imagery of the Avalon streaking through the void is awe inspiring. The vessel is cavernous, allowing Tyldum to set the action in a variety of internal locations as the universe passes by outside, and a few space walk excursions add to the diverse visual buffet on display.

Passengers does hurtle into a bit of a technical muddle towards its climax. While the emotional build-up is superb and Tyldum hits all the high notes required for the human drama, the scientific parts of the story are jettisoned into deep space. There is a frantic rush to bang things into shape, and it's all a blur of running around, opening hatches, pointing at random items, pulling levers and putting out fires with condescendingly minimalistic explanations.

Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence competently bring the two central characters to life without necessarily setting the planets on fire. They hold their own amidst all the sleek hardware, and Lawrence handles the emotional ups and down forced on Aurora with a growing maturity. Michael Sheen is ridiculously appropriate as an android bartender, while in a late and relatively brief appearance, Laurence Fishburne adds heft as a crew officer.

The story of Jim and Aurora carries echoes of everyday life, where some some events appear bigger than what an individual can comprehend, while others are clearly the work of a human hand but no less impactful. Finding meaning in the here and now is never easy, and Passengers is a lyrical exploration about dealing with what is, despite what may have been.

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Movie Review: Far From The Madding Crowd (2015)

A luscious adaptation of the Thomas Hardy romantic classic, Far From The Madding Crowd looks dreamy but is constrained by the frustrations inherent in the story.

In rural Britain of the 1870s, Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) is a humble, strong-willed and unmarried young woman. Next-door sheep farmer Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) sets his eyes on Bathsheba and eventually proposes, but she turns him down, unwilling to become a man's property. Gabriel hits hard times and loses everything; Bathsheba unexpectedly inherits an estate and becomes a respected land owner. She hires Gabriel to tend to her sheep, he continues to care deeply for her from afar, but their relationship remains tense.

Two more suitors come forward to try and win Bathsheba's heart. William Boldwood (Michael Sheen) is a very wealthy but aging and lonely estate owner. Sergeant Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge) is a dashing soldier who lost his true love Fanny (Juno Temple) due to a wedding-day misunderstanding. Bathsheba finally makes her choice and marries a man, setting off a series of unexpected events.

Directed by Thomas Vinterberg, Far From The Madding Crowd is a pleasure for the eye. Plenty of outdoor scenes bring the British countryside to life, and Vinterberg and cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen use the magic hour to capture an idyllic landscape filled with lush greens and yellows, long shadows and beautiful skies. The music score by Craig Armstrong adds to the pensive mood.

The artistry is appreciated, because the story belongs in another century and carries suspect appeal. While Bathsheba is a fictional heroine ahead of her time, Hardy's story is bogged down in her love life, and for two hours the story starts and stops with Bathsheba agonizing over men. This smart and independent woman also suddenly displays atrocious instincts to pick the very worst of three possible choices, pushing deep into incredulous melodrama territory and prolonging the resolution.

The sturdy performances help to maintain interest. Carey Mulligan does the best she can with the central role, not necessarily giving Bathsheba new depth but displaying a convincing version of early prototype feminism. Matthias Schoenaerts looks as good as the scenery, although he does slip into mopey mode. Michael Sheen and Tom Sturridge stick closely to their characters' basic definitions of the lonely love struck rich man and conniving soldier respectively.

In Far From The Madding Crowd Bathsheba's judgment may be patchy, but at least the visuals are consistently absorbing.

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The Movies Of Michael Sheen

All movies starring Michael Sheen and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Kingdom Of Heaven (2005)

The Queen (2006)

Blood Diamond (2006)

Frost/Nixon (2008)

The Damned United (2009)

Unthinkable (2010)

Midnight In Paris (2011)

Kill The Messenger (2014)

Far From The Madding Crowd (2015)

Nocturnal Animals (2016)

Passengers (2016)

Home Again (2017)

Brad's Status (2017)

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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: The Damned United (2009)

The wrong person, for the wrong job, at the wrong time.  The outcome is one the shortest management tenures in English football history, as Brian Clough was hired and then fired 44 days later by Leeds United in 1974.

The Damned United benefits from Michael Sheen's engrossing performance as Clough, and director Tom Hooper captures the essence of English football that drives managers, coaches, and owners to sacrifice any semblance of normal life for a shot at potential glory on muddy pitches under gloomy skies every Saturday afternoon.  Based on the book by David Peace, the film peeks into the football boardrooms, dressing rooms, and training fields where the roots of success or failure are planted.

The Damned United alternates between Clough's time at Leeds in 1974 with the story of his earlier, incredible success at Derby County between 1967 and 1973.  With his assistant Peter Taylor, Clough took Derby from the bottom of the Second Division to the English League First Division title and the semi-final of the European Cup.  The Damned United provides glimpses of what made the Clough / Taylor partnership so effective: Clough identifying exactly what type of player the team lacks; Taylor going out and finding the perfect player who would be the missing piece in the jigsaw; Clough finding a way to sign the player, often by going behind the wishes of his Chairman.

The film portrays Clough's success at Derby, perhaps simplistically, as driven by an obsession to prove himself better that Leeds manager Don Revie, and a hatred for everything that Leeds stood for. Revie had built Leeds into an all-conquering dynasty as the most successful, arrogant and brutally physical club side in England.

The Damned United also emphasizes Clough's personality and ego at the expense of demonstrating his footballing genius. There are plenty of scenes where he shoots off his mouth and leaves no doubt about how highly he thinks of himself; there are hardly any scenes revealing how he brought the best out of his players, or tactically outwitted his opponents.

Clough's big mouth and massive ego ensure that he burns all his bridges at Derby, and he temporarily also manages to destroy his relationship with Taylor. This does not stop Leeds from approaching Clough to replace Revie when the latter accepts the job as manager of England. Clough takes control at the club that he has always hated, and proceeds to say and do everything in absolutely the wrong way, immediately alienating his star-studded squad and undermining the team's playing style and spirit. After a miserable start to the 1974-75 season, Clough is unceremoniously dumped by the Leeds Board of Directors.

Clough's time at Leeds United was the chastening he needed to sort out his faults, re-group, and proceed to his subsequent greatest success, taking Nottingham Forest from the Second Division to double European Cup champions between 1975 and 1980, after he learned some humility and repaired his relationship with Taylor. Brian Clough may have failed at Leeds, but in his damnation lay the seeds of his greatest triumphs.

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