Breast Actress.

Sometimes I get pissed at Helen Mirren for being so awesome, yet today watching her receive a lifetime achievement award during the European Film Awards ceremony I couldn't help but allow my heart to fill with joy for the amount of awesomeness she brings to it. I discuss her and other winners (go Amour!) at The Film Experience.

Short Takes: "Four Lions", "Valhalla Rising" and "Micmacs"

Micmacs **½
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

You can almost see the ACME label on every scene in this hyperactive, restless revenge comedy. Dany Boon plays a man who is almost killed during a shooting. He recovers, is adopted by a group of misfits (including Yolande Moreau and Jeunet favorite Dominique Pinon) and decides to take revenge not on the man who shot him but on the company who made the bullet. There is often too much going on in this movie and while Jeunet is a master of Tati-esque sequences and sepia toned acid comedy, this time his story gets lost behind the style. There are references to old Warner Brothers films (Max Steiner is even credited as a composer) but we never really understand what this has to do with anything, given this isn't an homage to classic films and Jeunet tries to discuss morals he can't handle while holding a stick of dynamite in his hand.
The film never decides if it wants to be Wile E. Coyote or Bogie and because of this it's unable to either catch or seduce us.
















Valhalla Rising **
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

If Conan the Barbarian had been directed by Stanley Kubrick from a screenplay by Ingmar Bergman, it would've looked something like this odd Viking tale set during the Crusades. Mads Mikkelsen plays a one-eyed mysterious warrior who goes by the name of what else but One-Eye? A man of few words, he doesn't utter a single word in the entire film (Mikkelsen's commitment is impressive!), he prefers to gut a man with his bare hands and use his power of prophecy to lead a group of Crusaders to their demise.
Because of its excessive infatuation with itself the film often forgets an audience is sitting in front and the film seems to quickly lose any interest in getting the audience involved in any of what's going on. The landscape cinematography is marvelous but what should feel primal and hauntingly adventurous mostly feels self indulgent and overdone.















Four Lions ***
Director: Chris Morris

A film that makes the phrase "I would kill you bro" sound funny and heartwarming (!) deserves an applause based only on the cojones of its screenplay. That said screenplay is a comedy about British Muslim terrorists, that not for a single moment results demeaning, offensive or reductive is nothing if not remarkable. The way a satire should be done, Four Lions relies on a magnificent ensemble (Kayvan Novak is a comedic revelation) to work effortlessly.
"Why shouldn't I be a bomber if you treat me like one?" asks one of the characters in one of the film's many moments of brutal poignancy. Written with bravado by Morris, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong and handheld shot by the appropriately named cinematographer Lol Crawley the film resembles a BBC mockumentary series and suffers slightly because it's too episodic for its own good sometimes.
Four Lions is funny not because of how dim-witted and stupid its characters are but because it reminds us of the idiotic acts committed in the name of faith. Terrorism's greatest weapon aren't bombs but simple human stupidity.

Clash of the Titans *1/2

Director: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Sam Worthington, Gemma Arterton, Mads Mikkelsen
Jason Flemyng, Polly Walker, Hans Matheson, Luke Evans
Alexa Davalos, Nicolas Hoult, Danny Huston
Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson

Imagine for one second that you're living in ancient Greece, with no television, internet or movies and all you have to entertain yourself are stories.
These stories of course won't tell you about mundane events but about things so fantastical that not only do they make your jaw drop to the floor but also serve as explanations of what's going on in the world around you.
Now before getting too deep into the concept of myth, imagine that centuries later you get these stories, but they are being told by someone who has great editing software, satisfying CGI but not an ounce of imagination.
This would sum up the experience of Clash of the Titans, a remake of the 1981 camp classic which tells of the struggles between men and deities in ancient times.
Sam Worthington (the go to guy for ordinary men-with killer calves-turned unexpected hero) plays Perseus, a demigod, son of Zeus (Neeson) and a mortal woman, who is chosen by the people of Argos to save them from the wrath of the Kraken.
The beast will be released by, god of the underworld, Hades (Fiennes) to teach humans not to defy the rulers of the Olympus.
Of course Hades has secret plans of his own (how could he not when played with such delicious wickedness by Fiennes?) and while Perseus has his adventures down below, the gods go through their own drama.
It should suffice to sum up the film's quality to say that you often might want more of the Olympian drama (probably owed to the quality of the actors playing them) than the struggles of Perseus who seems to fulfill cliché more often than prophecy.
Worthington lacks qualities to make his character interesting; when someone tells him that he has the "best of both worlds" they must be referring to sculpture and athleticism, because he lacks any inkling of humanity and doesn't have the grandiosity to be godlike. The other human characters fare equally, with princess Andromeda (Davalos) being little more than an ornament (while straying greatly from the myth and the original film) and the people Perseus encounters being nothing more than an assortment of great actors (Mikkelsen, Walker and Postlethwaite come to mind particularly) in tepid roles.
Perhaps the film's biggest flaw is in fact its constant ability to underwhelm. With or without added visual dimensions the film never transports you to another place. Visuals for this kind of movie should feel mythical, the ones here are yet another version of what was done in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and 300 to greater effect.
Action sequences are done in the recurrent style of making as many cuts as you can, which never gives us time to grasp the unique aspects of the creatures Perseus fights and every moment that promises excitement is minimized by the director's tendency to make everything seem rushed and easy.
How can a story of its kind be passed on to others when there is no sense of heroism or any special qualities to it?
In the end Clash of the Titans sadly never seems able to comprehend what epic means.

Flame & Citron ***

Director: Ole Christian Madsen
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Thure Lindhardt
Stine Stengade, Christian Berkel, Peter Mygind

"We will need heroes" says someone to Flame (Lindhart) and Citron (Mikkelsen), almost asking them to fill the void.
They are the most representative figures in the Danish Resistance against Nazi invaders; their mission is to eliminate Nazi officers as well as Danes who are betraying their country.
Their targets include high rank Nazi officers, double agents and even women! Their dilemma lies in identifying the cause for their actions.
A German officer (Hanns Zischler) tells Flame that there are only three reasons why people go to war:career opportunity, ideology and hatred for their enemy.
The film mostly tries to fit them into one of those to make their legend more understandable (after all the movie is based on true events) and the unlikely heroes find themselves killing people while trying to lead normal lives and even find romance.
Unlike American WWII films which take themselves so seriously, "Flame & Citron" plays out like a historical thriller with film noir strokes.
Both lead characters narrate the film at one point or another, their contributions filling in facts that remain unknown to the other.
Lindhart gives a brilliant performance as the baby faced Flame, despite his young age; he's 23 as the object of his affection, femme fatale, Ketty Selmer (Stengade) points out disturbed.
Despite this Lindhart evokes a sense of timeless valor and to some degree even animalistic violence.
Citron, as played by Mikkelsen, comes off as a nervous-he's always sweaty-figure who makes obvious that it's his compromise with the cause that made him leave behind a completely different life.
In one pivotal scene he "robs" a grocery but refuses to take the money, only taking goods for his estranged wife and daughter. And after his woman confesses she has fallen for someone else she exclaims "if I tell you [who he is] you'll kill him!", ignorant to the fact that her husband is in fact yet to commit his first homicide.
In this way the film also plays with our conceptions of public figures and the way they see themselves. This notion also plays out like a flaw in a way, because even when German officers seem to know the identity of the rebels-Flame's bright red hair being one of the details they hunt-they still roam largely in places crowded by Nazis.
The screenplay has a slight problem establishing differences between what we know and what the rest of the characters know; therefore, when the movie reaches its "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"-like finale we aren't really surprised, just mystified that it took so long for it to come.