Reviews: Night Moves, Lucy, Goodbye to Language

Night Moves

Director: Kelly Reichardt

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, Peter Sarsgaard

Running time: 112mins
Three radical environmentalists blow up a hydroelectric dam and then must deal with the unintended consequences of their actions in Reichardt’s low-key thriller. It’s a great premise exploring the fine line between protest and criminality, and the film looks immaculate (courtesy of cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt). Somehow, though, it doesn’t work. In fact, I found a lot of Night Moves terribly clichéd, especially the characters. Fanning’s Dena is an archetypal rich-girl radical, Eisenberg’s Josh is “deep” and taciturn, while Sarsgaard is Harmon, a cynical, burnt-out marine. These are caricatures not characters, and I almost clicked the “off” switch the moment one of the other protesters started offering to “read people’s auras”. Satire is one thing but this just felt lazy. That said, I’m a stickler for strong endings and at least Night Moves delivers in that respect. Bit too late though.

Rating: W

Night Moves is available now on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD

Lucy

Director: Luc Besson

Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-sik Choi

Running time: 89mins

For a film about unlocking the vast potential of the human mind, Lucy is spectacularly dumb. Built upon the apocryphal notion that we can only access 10 per cent of our brain’s potential, Besson sets about showing us what might happen when that is boosted tenfold. If we’re Johansson’s Lucy, it turns out we’d transform into vengeful, superhuman killers, despatching an army of malicious foreigners as we blaze a trail of destruction back to the door of the drug overlord who wronged us. Having played the Black Window with distinction for a few years now, Johansson could do this stuff in her sleep but still manages to impress; bruised vulnerability early on, giving way to a kind of post-human glacial calm in the film’s latter stages. It’s probably the final 15 minutes that is the most rewarding here as Lucy’s brain power gets closer and closer to the magic 100 per cent and things take a turn for the weird. Yes, like a lot of Besson’s films, it’s loud, flashy and utterly silly but if Lucy 2 opened tomorrow I’d almost certainly buy a ticket.

Rating: WW

Lucy is available now on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD

Goodbye to Language

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Starring: Héloïse Godet, Kamel Abdeli, Richard Chevallier
Running time: 70mins
Godard is arguably the most famous and celebrated French filmmaker in history. He pioneered the country’s Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) movement in the 1960s and is responsible for films widely regarded as classics on both sides of the Atlantic, such as Breathless and Alphaville. At the age of 84 he’s still going strong and Goodbye to Language – a baffling but beguiling visual poem about communication and relationships, starring his dog Roxy(!) – was recently named film of the year by the influential and prestigious US National Society of Film Critics, just pipping Boyhood. But there’s a problem. The film was shot in 3D and, to understand and appreciate it properly, really needs to be seen in that format, something that has proved tricky in the UK. Unlike blockbuster 3D movies, it only had a very limited cinema release and, although a 3D Blu-ray is available, I can’t imagine many Godard fans actually owning a compatible machine to play it on. So, what we have instead is this 2D version and you quickly get the impression you’re missing something. Goodbye to Language is not an easy watch – ideas, images and scenes flit in and out like insects; it’s all a bit inscrutable and unknowable, and surely made more so by not being able to see it as the director intended. It’s frustrating – like watching a football match from behind a concrete pillar – and sadly typical of the way foreign language cinema is treated in this country. If you live out in the sticks, like I do, you have about as much chance of seeing a subtitled picture at your local Odeon as you do of flying to the moon. The arrival of View on Demand (VOD) has alleviated the situation in recent years but even that is of limited use in this case.
Rating: WW

Goodbye to Language is available now on DVD, Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray and Amazon Prime

Ratings

WWWW = Wonderful

WWW = Worthy

WW = Watchable

W = Woeful

The best of 2014 part 4

I keep hearing how it hasn’t been an especially good year for film but I couldn’t disagree more – I could have easily done a top 40 and filled it with movies I thoroughly enjoyed. There are some fine pictures that didn’t make this list – Paddington, The Box Trolls and The Lego Movie, if we are talking kids’ films; Leviathan, Heli, Norte: The End of History, and Two Days, One Night, if we’re talking challenging foreign cinema. Add to that Jimmy’s Hall, Calvary, X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Possibilities Are Endless, The Punk Singer, Fruitvale Station, and Exhibition – all of them crackers...

So, then, to my favourite film of 2014…

1. Under the Skin (Director: Jonathan Glazer)

Scarlett Johansson has done some great work this year – as a kick-arse Avenger in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and a disembodied artificial intelligence in Her. The actress' role as an extra-terrestrial femme fatale in Under The Skin, though, is in a different league altogether: eerie, erotic, unsettling, mesmerising, terrifying. At first, an alienated, emotion-free void; later, confused and vulnerable as her mission on Earth starts to go horribly awry.

The film itself – Glazer's third following Sexy Beast and the underrated Birth – is not only my favourite film of 2014 but a genuine, copper-bottomed masterpiece. A sci-fi horror for grown-ups, the like of which I haven't seen in a depressingly long time. Sure, you can see the DNA of Kubrick, Roeg and Lynch here and there but Glazer is nodding respectfully rather than appropriating. Sparse of dialogue, dripping with atmosphere and buoyed by Mica Levi’s beautifully discordant soundtrack, Under The Skin feels unique, fresh and utterly vital.

Scene after scene punches you in the guts and lingers long in the memory – a truly disturbing sequence shot on a freezing-cold beach featuring a howling toddler, a drowning couple and an exhausted would-be rescuer perhaps being the standout moment.

It’s a clever film, too. What better way to explore themes of otherness and alienation than by sticking an impossibly glamorous A-list Hollywood actress in the middle of Glasgow on a boozy Saturday night and getting her to interact with the real people she meets there?

A lot of movies I’ve seen this year – even a couple of the very good ones on this list – are great for the first hour or so, before losing focus in their final act; barely able to stagger over the finish line. One of the things I love most about Under The Skin is that its ending is so perfect – a brutal coming together of many of the film’s themes and ideas as hunter becomes hunted.

The picture was well loved by critics but seemed to divide audiences. Its detractors – many of whom dismissed it as pretentious (code for “I didn’t understand it”) – are hopelessly, embarrassingly wrong. In 10-20 years time, it will be a thoroughly adored sci-fi cult classic with a pile of books written about it. It will be afforded the same reverence as Blade Runner, Alien or The Man Who Fell To Earth. And it will deserve every bit of it.

Next: the year's biggest turkeys...