Movie Review: Disturbia (2007)

Genre: Thriller  

Director: D.J. Caruso  

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Carrie-Anne Moss, David Morse, Sarah Roemer, Viola Davis  

Running Time: 105 minutes  

Synopsis: Depressed after losing his father in a car accident, teenager Kale (Shia LaBeouf) strikes his Spanish teacher and earns a sentence of house arrest for three months. With little to keep him occupied, Kale clashes with his mother Julie (Carrie-Anne Moss), but eventually settles down to a routine of spying on the neighbours. Newly arrived girl-next-door Ashley (Sarah Roemer) catches his eye, but more menacing is neighbour Robert Turner (David Morse), who may or may not be a fugitive serial killer.

What Works Well: This reimagining of Hitchcock's Rear Window is formulated for a younger audience, and enjoys a likeable cast led by Shia LaBeouf (understandably glum but sensitive), Sarah Roemer (every teenage boy's dream sexy-and-smart girl-next-door), and Aaron Yoo (as Kale's best friend Ronnie). As they get into deeper trouble snooping on the neighbourhood, co-writers Christopher Landon and Carl Ellsworth sneak in snide commentary about the suburbs as a place where secrets (whether bland or malevolent) hide behind every hedge.

What Does Not Work As Well: Director D.J. Caruso never quite gets the tone right. For too long the plot embraces the light-hearted humorous adventures of a troubled young man and the beginnings of puppy love, but the third act suddenly descends into all-out horror territory. Not enough time is spent with the antagonist, who remains a shell of boogeyman, robbing the climax of impact. 

Conclusion: The curtains and shades are there for a reason.

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Movie Review: Pieces Of A Woman (2020)

A drama about infant loss, Pieces Of A Woman traces a mother's attempt to pick up life's shattered fragments after unspeakable trauma.

In Boston, office worker Martha Weiss (Vanessa Kirby) is expecting her first child with her partner Sean (Shia LaBeouf), a bridge construction foreman. They are planning a home birth, but when Martha goes into labour her midwife Barbara is occupied with another delivery. Back-up midwife Eva (Molly Parker) arrives to help. After a difficult labour the baby is born, but dies in Martha's arms within minutes.

The anguish of losing the child impacts the relationship between Martha and Sean, who cope in different ways. Martha's wealthy and strong-willed mother Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn) exerts her influence and further drives a wedge between the couple. Meanwhile Eva faces criminal charges, with Martha's cousin Suzanne (Sarah Snook) prosecuting, but Martha appears uninterested in redress through the courts.

An adaptation of the play by Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber, who wrote from their experience after a miscarriage, Pieces Of A Woman visits places of disorienting emotional pain. Wéber wrote the screenplay and Mundruczó takes on directing duties, and together they create every parent's nightmare, a one-way trip to sudden, destroyed expectations.

The film salutes its stage origins without falling victim to them. In the indoor scenes Mundruczó deploys long, fluid takes with elegant camera motion. The birth sequence is a remarkable continuous shot lasting 24 minutes, starting with Martha's increasingly painful contractions and ending with the arrival of the ambulance, underlining the unidirectional nature of the childbirth experience. Once the process starts Martha and Sean have no exit ramps away from whatever outcome awaits.

The emotional focus is on Martha, and the stabs of agony she experiences every time she spots a child, or worse, a young child with a parent. But her deeply personal experience is also shaped by those closest to her. After the baby's death, Martha and Sean can agree on little. She wants to donate the baby to science; he is not so sure. He wants to pursue a civil court case; she is not convinced. She grieves in silence; he is more talkative. He resorts to drinking; she develops a fascination with apple seeds. And finally the physical intimacy seeps out the marriage, and Sean goes looking for someone else and somewhere else. Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf create a relatable ordinary couple thrust into a dark new reality they are ill equipped to navigate.

To make matters worse Elizabeth never really liked Sean, and now starts manipulating him to poke at her perceptions of Martha's weaknesses. Ellen Burstyn shines as a grandmother channelling her grief into anger and a determination to pin the blame on Eva, because someone simply must be responsible for her hurt.

A speechy ending reaches for a tidy resolution to an untidy tragedy. But Pieces Of A Woman succeeds in portraying with honest sensitivity the shock of death crashing through the door when only a new life was expected.



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Movie Review: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

A sequel to the classic 1987 financial drama, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a competent continuation of the story without ever rising to the same heights.

In 2001 Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is released from prison after serving eight years for fraudulent financial activities. By 2008 he is living a quiet life, promoting his book and predicting an economic disaster to come. Ambitious securities trader Jacob Moore (Shia LaBeouf) is in love with Gordon's daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan), who is not on speaking terms with her father. Jacob works for Keller Zabel Investments, a firm being shaken by the early rumblings of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Rival Bretton James (Josh Brolin) of the firm Churchill Schwartz senses weakness and ends the career of Jacob's boss and mentor Louis Zabel (Frank Langella). Bretton and Gordon share a chequered history, creating an opportunity for Gordon and Jacob to team up against a common foe. In return for Gordon supplying Jacob with information about Bretton's unethical trading conduct, Jacob tries to arrange a reconciliation between Gordon and Winnie. But with the entire financial market system on the verge of collapse, personal agendas may be sideswiped by bigger events.

With the 2008 Great Recession providing a seemingly ideal backdrop, director Oliver Stone returns to the world of greed, backstabbing and unimaginable wealth among the movers and shakers at the epicentre of capitalism. Money Never Sleeps is glitzy and visually hyperkinetic, featuring rushed plot developments, the occasional dizzy torrent of characters and names, and an abundance of split screens superimposed with rapidly changing numbers, charts, and artistic silhouettes.

But for all the moving and shaking, the reality of the financial crisis is more astounding than any fictional story conjured up by co-writers Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff. Here the script goes searching for memorable moments to rival the Greed is Good speech from the first film, but instead settles for a routine tale of revenge, comebacks, father-daughter tension and an unconvincing romance. Freshness and originality are sorely lacking, and even the ending reaches for sappy when a more biting resolution was available.

Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko is by far the best thing on display, and the film suffers mightily when he is off-screen. Neither Josh Brolin as the designated new villain nor Shia LaBeouf as the feisty newcomer have the charisma or sparkle to engage, and they are ill served by predictable and bland dialogue exchanges.

The romance between Jacob and Winnie is the weakest part of the film, as they spend most of the time arguing. Carey Mulligan cannot overcome her character's repeated internal inconsistencies, starting with why a woman with left-leaning politics and disgusted by her father's profession would fall for a slick Wall Street guy.

The cast is deep in underutilized talent, including Eli Wallach in his last feature film as a Wall Street veteran and Susan Sarandon as Jacob's mother, overextended on real estate speculation. Charlie Sheen makes a one-scene appearance as Bud Fox, and Sylvia Miles has an equally brief role as a realtor. The soundtrack is an audacious but ultimate incongruous and unsuitable selection of songs written and performed by David Byrne and Brian Eno.

Money Never Sleeps offers a nod to emerging technologies and the fledgling field of alternative energy sources, and a few strong and tense scenes are staged at the Federal Reserve as the most powerful bankers in the country grapple with the meltdown of their entire industry. But while the subject matter is always reasonably engrossing due to the inherent corruption, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps uses gilded packaging to cover up distinctly familiar fundamentals.

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Movie Review: American Honey (2016)

A social drama, American Honey is a road trip through the eyes of lost and damaged youth. The film has a lyrical quality, but also wallows for too long in one emotional place.

In a nondescript Oklahoma suburb, teenager Star (Sasha Lane) looks after two children who are not her own, and tolerates sexual abuse from their white trash father. A chance encounter with a group of teenagers packed into a van, including the charismatic Jake (Shia LaBeouf), prompts Star to suddenly change her life: she deposits the kids back with their parents and joins Jake and the team.

The group is a magazine crew, teenagers who travel from city to city duping customers into buying subscriptions to magazines they don't need. Their leader is the business-minded Krystal (Riley Keough), while Jake is the group's best-seller and also Krystal's lover. But Star and Jake are attracted to each other, and as she is exposed to his much less than honest selling tactics, she cannot help falling for him, triggering Krystal's seething rage.

Inspired by a New York Times article about magazine crews and directed and written by Andrea Arnold, American Honey is more of an experience than a film. While the handheld camerawork, boxy 1.37:1 aspect ratio and improvised dialogue evoke a low-budget documentary style, the plot does not have much to offer, and the characters are who they are essentially from start to finish.

Rather than dazzle with incident, the film aims to immerse in feelings, and to some degree Arnold succeeds. This is fly-over America as seen by listless youth happy to smoke, drink, get stoned, and spend untold hours squished into a van. Work consists of lying to people, and the nights are confined to downtrodden motel rooms. Compared to whatever it is they are running from, for these young people this is the good life.

Intriguing as this lifestyle is, Arnold eventually bumps up against the limits of the material, and does not help herself by prolonging the film to a mammoth 163 minutes. Despite a quite mesmerizing performance by newcomer Sasha Lane, only so many back-in-the-van scenes can pass by before they all start to meld into each other. Not helping matters is the utter disregard for any of the characters outside of Star, Jake and Krystal. Packing the van with about seven other teenagers (mostly non-professional actors) and then proceeding to ignore them is a puzzling construct.

Star's journey of self-discovery frequently saves the day. In a succession of episodes shadowing Jake or on her own with prospective magazine customers, she confronts, challenges and often breaks her limits in search of money, sex, love and some sense of definition. Her individual trip nests within the overall city to city trek, providing the often sad perspective of a young woman adopted by a surrogate family of equally lost souls and taking on the world with no guidance.

Arnold leaves out any judgments or questions about how it has all come to this. These youth have no past they are willing to speak of. More worryingly, on this evidence their future prospects appear just as dim, despite the naive dreams they whisper to each other in the dark of night.

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Movie Review: Lawless (2012)

A prohibition-era action drama based on real events, Lawless mixes violence with family bonds and local skirmishes for control of the illicit alcohol trade. As three brothers from rural Virginia face off against big city criminals, there are plenty of predicable elements but also some snazzy moments of excitement.

It's 1931, and brothers Forrest, Howard and Jack Bondurant (Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke and Shia LaBeouf) are among the more successful families independently manufacturing and distributing alcohol in rural Franklin County, Virginia. Forrest is the brains, Howard the muscle, and the youngest Jack is the driver, considered by Forrest to be not-yet-ready for the serious business of intimidation and deal-making. The brothers operate under a mythology of invincibility, partially justified by Forrest's war-time adventures. The local sheriffs are friendly and kept under control with a regular supply of booze.

Maggie (Jessica Chastain), a dancer escaping from the chaos of Chicago, offers her waitressing services to the Bondurants and initiates an across-the-room relationship with Forrest. Meanwhile, Jack starts to romantically pursue Bertha (Mia Wasikowaska), the local reverend's daughter. With plenty of money to be made in the illegal alcohol trade, the big-time gangsters move into the Bondurant's turf. Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) is sent in to do the dirty work of bringing the ragtag moonshiners under the control of Chicago mobsters. Forrest is the only producer who resists, leading to increasing levels of violence as Rakes tightens the noose of intimidation and Forrest lashes back.

Lawless is based on true events as described in the book The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant, Jack's grandson. Director John Hillcoat aims for a Bonnie And Clyde type vibe, with the Bondurants as 1930s outlaws to cheer for because they are likable rogues and everyone else is as bad or even more corrupt. To a certain extent the film succeeds as a romp on the backroads of the moonshine industry, with some wild but at least somewhat true episodes of throat slitting, broad daylight street gun battles, and ingeniously hidden distilleries pumping out unfathomable amounts of alcohol.

Fun as the adventures are, the film is also lacking in the necessary charm. Forrest is the closest Hillcoat comes to finding a compelling character, with Tom Hardy delivering an entertainingly gruff and mumble-filled performance. But about half way through the film his presence is sidelined for a long stretch, and the narrative momentum suffers.

The story is predominantly told through Jack's eyes, the least interesting of the brothers, and his moments of growth and development are both few and jarring when they happen. Jack's rather prolonged pursuit of Bertha fails to ignite.  Also disappointing is an underdeveloped role for Jessica Chastain as Maggie. She gets one good scene of proactive yet sensitive seduction, but otherwise settles firmly into the background.

What the protagonists may lack in flair, Special Deputy Charlie Rakes more than makes up for in over-the-top despicable smarm. Guy Pearce does not hold back in creating an easy-to-hate villain, from the ridiculous hair to the city slicker clothes and sniffy condescending attitude. The clash between Forrest and Rakes is a spicy collision between idealized rural honesty and exaggerated urbanite arrogance. Also adding some edge is Gary Oldman, who makes a couple of relatively brief but effective appearances as Floyd Banner, another well-financed gangster muscling in on the alcohol business.

The backdrops are provided by Benoît Delhomme's cinematography, and he creates a landscape only marginally disturbed by human settlement. Mountainous rural Virginia of the 1930s is a bleak, gray place, a comfortable home for the locals but relatively foreboding to outsiders, a perfect base from which an illegal industry can thrive.

Lawless achieves and maintains a middling level of engagement. Much like the moonshine itself, the quality varies by the batch but the underlying buzz is always there.

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Movie Review: The Company You Keep (2012)

A drama about former revolutionaries approaching their twilight, The Company You Keep presents an interesting treatise but is ultimately undermined personalized simplifications.

Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon) is arrested in upstate New York. For over 30 years she was living a simple domestic life under a false identity, evading arrest for the murder of a Michigan bank security guard during a 1980 robbery-gone-wrong. Sharon was as a member of the revolutionary Weather Underground, a small group of idealistic students who turned to violence against symbols of the US government. After her arrest, young reporter Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) is encouraged by his editor (Stanley Tucci) to explore Sharon's story. Ben's investigation leads him to Jim Grant (Robert Redford), a widower and well-respected Albany lawyer. Shepard exposes Jim's real identity as fugitive Nick Sloan, another former member of the Weather Underground.

FBI agent Cornelius (Terrence Howard) closes in, forcing Nick to flee. He deposits his young daughter with his brother Daniel (Chris Cooper) and embarks on a cross-country escape to re-connect with his old associates including lumberyard owner Donal Fitzgerald (Nick Nolte) and college professor Jed Lewis (Richard Jenkins). Nick's real objective is to flush out Mimi Lurie (Julie Christie), the only former member of the revolutionaries who can clear his name. Ben also continues his chase of the story, and starts to uncover some well-kept secrets related to the botched Michigan heist from many years ago.

The Company You Keep walks a tightrope between a serious examination of idealism in old age, and a rather opportunistic gathering of veteran actors enjoying a reunion. Director Robert Redford manages to land the film just on the right side of relevant, thanks to an earnest tone, committed performances, and a story that touches on broad societal dynamics but always retains a personal focus.

The script by Lem Dobbs presents the many different pathways to adulthood available to young revolutionaries. Sharon and Nick attempted to meld into obscurity. Mimi and her friend Mac Mcleod (Sam Elliott) kept up the subversive protests in any available form, with Mimi evolving into a marijuana trafficker. College teacher Jed never approved of violent methods, and so never forgave the likes of Nick for contaminating the movement of peaceful protesters. Lumberyard owner Donal and organic farmer Billy Cusimano (Stephen Root) moved into seemingly respectable businesses, with just a whiff of illicit dealings.

With the best years well behind them they all ask themselves questions about the value of their youthful struggle, whether the fight was won or lost, and what they could or should have done differently. In adulthood they find varying degrees of contentment, either hiding from their past or celebrating it. As parents Sharon and Nick view life through the lens of their families, a perspective that brings a desire to accept responsibility and right the wrongs of history. The Company You Keep retains its power as long as it rides the wave of social movement commentary through the retrospective and tired eyes of the individuals who influenced it.

The film falters when it starts to resemble a routine chase movie, with Nick always one step ahead of agent Cornelius. And while the focus on individuals is commendable, the ending is fumbled once it gets too personal. As the background to the ill-fated Michigan bank robbery is revealed, threads emerge to entangle Henry Osborne (Brendan Gleeson), the investigating officer of the time, into the web once inhabited by Nick and Mimi. The film gets distracted by the minutiae of shady family friendships, lost children and selfish behaviour, and the momentum built by the broader social context is all but lost.

A cast this deep in talent was only ever going to be excellent. Redford and LaBeouf get the biggest roles, with Redford showing every one of his 77 years, and LaBeouf perhaps pushing the aggressive young reporter role too hard. While it is a pleasure to see Julie Christie in a short but still meaningful role, frustratingly, stars like Sarandon, Nolte, Elliott and Anna Kendrick (as an FBI agent) get minimal screen time.

The Company You Keep does not fully engage, but does delve into essential issues in the company of outstanding talent.

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Movie Review: Fury (2014)

The most impressive World War Two film since Saving Private Ryan, Fury borrows heavily from Spielberg's classic but also defines its own overwhelming intensity. Director and writer David Ayer delivers a stunningly gritty look at men in cramped surroundings fighting through a prolonged and ugly war that simply refuses to end quietly.

It's April, 1945, World War Two in Europe is in its final days and the Allies are pushing deep into Germany. Hitler has ordered every man, woman and child to defend the fatherland. The end result is not in doubt, and yet the fighting grinds on. On the front lines veteran Staff Sergeant Don "Wardaddy" Collier (Brad Pitt) commands a US Army Sherman tank nicknamed Fury, with an experienced and tight crew consisting of gunner Swan (Shia LaBeouf), loader Travis (Jon Bernthal), and driver Garcia (Michael Peña). The fifth crew member and assistant driver has just been killed, his guts splattered all over the tank. In the prevailing chaos army typist Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) is assigned to Fury as the replacement crew member.

Norman has never seen the inside of a tank before, and never killed anyone, and he is initially a poor fit within Fury's battle hardened crew. With vicious fighting continuing against ever more desperate German defenders, Wardaddy takes it upon himself to teach Norman the ways of war, forcing him to kill and badgering him into shape. When Fury participates in seizing a German town, Norman starts to understand the merciless brutality required of him. Wardaddy rewards him by arranging private time in the company of an attractive local German woman (Alicia von Rittberg), but this causes resentment among the other crew members. Still ahead for Fury is a bruising encounter with an imposing Tiger tank, and an attempt to seize and hold a strategic crossroads.

The parallels with Saving Private Ryan are obvious: a tight-knit fighting unit with every member sure of his task, a respected veteran leading the group, the new, untrained guy who struggles to integrate, and the final mission within the confused front lines against overwhelming numbers, resulting in heroism and sacrifice. Ayer gives Wardaddy a sharper edge as a commander who has long since adopted a kill-on-sight philosophy, unafraid to terminate captured prisoners, particularly hated members of the Waffen-SS. And Fury benefits from the focus on a single tank and its claustrophobic interior, a world which offers the promise of a protective shell and the threat of an instant casket.

The episodes of battle are fierce, loud and gory. There is a charge against defensive fortifications to rescue stranded infantry troops, the assault on the small town, a furious tactical battle against the imposing Tiger, and then the defence of the crossroads. Ayer delivers these scenes with unblinking violence, death greeting men, tanks and civilians in loud, frequent and unforgiving bursts, who lives and who dies determined by courage, fortitude and the incessant twists of fate.

And as Fury trundles across the terrain between battles, there are shots of corpses flattened into the mud, splattered faces of explosion victims, and dead civilian victims of the SS hanging from posts, as warning to those who refuse to partake in the defence of their country in the war's final convulsion. Rarely has the hellish aspect of war been so nonchalantly conveyed through the hardened eyes of the soldiers who make it so.

Fury offers plenty of opportunities to build the crew into real people. Ayer finds the men inside the tank hardened into soldiers resigned to a reality of violence, hoping for but not anticipating an ending, and evolved into a working family that now enjoys the job of war. There are anxieties in the buildups, adrenaline pumping thrills when the shooting starts, and euphoria when the battle ends and lives are intact. Swan emerges as Wardaddy's closest friend and advisor, but still a subordinate, while Norman is the young innocent who must adapt or die before his ineptitude costs too many more lives.

The pivotal character scene takes place in the apartment of the German woman Irma and her niece Emma, Wardaddy finding a place of relative refuge to clean-up, eat and maybe offer Norman a respite from the shock of battle. The scene has an unusual tautness. The Americans are not anymore liberators or rescuers; they are now invaders, taking over the territory and homes of their enemy, free to have their way with defenceless women. Wardaddy seems to be deciding on his next step in real time, measuring just how much victor justice to impose. Ayer patiently allows the drama to unfold, the conflict evolving from potential violence against women to the dangerous fracturing of trust among men who need to depend on each other to live.

Fury's final battle is as over the top as the crossroads are a surreal depiction of the intersection of hell and sacrifice. Nothing about the last stand should make sense, but in the context of a world gone insane with bloodlust, it the perfect ending to a war twitching towards an agonizing denouement, dragging as many victims as possible along with it.

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Movie Review: Eagle Eye (2008)

Largely forgettable and uninspired, Eagle Eye in a techno-thriller that reaches for the left-overs deep in the fridge and rehashes a story previously told better at least four times in films such as Failsafe (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Wargames (1983) and The Terminator series.

There is an attempt to update the story of the big computer turning on its makers for the era of global terrorism. In Eagle Eye, the super-secret, super-computer ARIIA being developed by the Department of Defence, gets totally pissed because its recommendation against a strike on a group of terrorists is over-ruled, resulting in the loss of American life.

This is enough for ARIIA to set-off the most convoluted plot ever to topple the current Administration. The computer recruits two seemingly innocent and clueless citizens, Jerry (Shia LaBeouf) and Rachel (Michelle Monaghan), taking control of their lives, throwing them together and using them to trigger regime change in the United States. The evil plot reaches absurd levels of complexity when it draws in Rachel's young son and his school band, as well as highly secret explosives that need to be hidden in brass instruments.

As so often happens when five screenwriters are credited, the weaknesses in the foundation of Eagle Eye are blatant, and can best be summarized in a few questions: given everything that ARIIA is seen to be capable of in the film, which seems to include controlling every single civilian and military electric, computer, digital and information network in the world, would it not have been easier to, say, knock Air Force One out of the sky? Launch a missile or two at the White House? We are asked to believe that ARIIA needs Jerry to unlock some system that prevented ARIIA from going rogue: actually, ARIIA is shown to be capable of mass mayhem on a grand and national scale, without any of Jerry's help, thank you very much.

And as another question, did the genius egg-heads who created ARIIA never watch any of these other movies about computers going bad? Did they not think to include, say, an "off" switch that was out of the computer's control?

In the absence of basic intelligence, the best that Eagle Eye can come up with is trying to hide its plot for a good two thirds of the movie. For a long time we are not told how and why the lives of Jerry and Rachel have been taken over, and we're just asked to sit back and enjoy the admittedly slick sequence of events that drives them to a rendezvous with the President's State of the Union address.

LaBeouf and Monaghan do their best, but mainly they just need to act confused and irritated with each other. Billy Bob Thornton, as an FBI Agent trying to figure out what Jerry is up to, seems to think he's remaking The Fugitive. Director D.J. Caruso does provide a nice polish to the movie, so at least all the nonsense looks good.

Eagle Eye is the equivalent of a locked-up computer: time to hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

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