Many biopics suffer under a pretty formulaic treatment. Director falls for musician; director idolises musician; director channels sloppy sentiments into movie; director portrays musician in an idealistic, and often very simplistic, manner. This, however, is exactly where Control shines. The cinematic debut of Anton Corbijn (previously famous for rock photography and music video direction) presents a realistically balanced portrait of Ian Curtis (Sam Riley), the enigmatic frontman of Joy Division. You’ll find no pedestals here; instead, the many varying sides of Curtis’s personality are laid bare, allowing audiences to form their own opinions. Charting his development from a bored recruitment officer to a tortured musical icon, this film closely examines his relationship with his wife, Deborah (Samantha Morton), and later his affair with Belgium journalist, Annik Honore (Alexander Maria Lara). The narrative’s inevitable pull towards Curtis’ disintegration and suicide makes it all the more enthralling viewing. Filmed entirely in black and white, this is a film that has truly succeeded in capturing the bittersweet tone of the period while simultaneously maintaining a captivating level of character complexity. Aside from some of Riley’s dance moves (that feel more robotic than the awkward motions of Curtis), this is a near-flawless film that should satiate film-lovers and Joy Division devotees alike.
Rating: 8.8
Canadian director David Cronenberg has long been polarising audience opinion through his extreme treatment of the human body. Under Cronenberg’s direction, the body is transformed into a piece of meat. If it is male, it will be thrown around the set with the set with all the weight of a worthless prop, inevitably ending up as a mass of slaughtered, bloody pulp. If it is female, it will become the star of an explicit sex scene, often being similarly treated as a prop that catalyses male pleasure. Cronenberg maintains this attitude in his latest thriller, Eastern Promises – a London-based tale of Russia’s global criminal brotherhood, Vory V Zakone, and the innocent midwife, Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), who is inexorably drawn into their world. At long last, though, Cronenberg’s physical and sexual excesses do not feel arbitrary. Instead, these extremes work to develop the film’s dark and threatening tone, to explore the limits of the male characters and to further the tautly thrilling narrative progression. Even the performances feel far more even-handed than in Cronenberg’s previous offerings, with Viggo Mortenson ideally capturing the moral ambiguity of Nikolai Luzhin (the official chauffer of the brotherhood) and Watts perfectly articulating Anna’s conflicting emotions of fear and curiosity. Combine this all with a genuinely tense, interesting and fairly complex storyline, and what you have here is one of Cronenberg’s most mature and impressive offerings thus far.
Rating: 9.0
There are plenty of sweet little comedies out there, and while many may succeed in producing that familiar, warm, fuzzy feeling, few do so with the aid of characters that are as truly memorable as those featured in Waitress. Written and directed by Adrienne Shelly (who also acts in it), Waitress in set in America’s deep south, where Jenna (Kerri Russell) dreams of escaping her loveless, abusive marriage, until an unexpected pregnancy throws her plans of course. The pregnancy, which she initially sees as a curse, gradually evolves into a blessing-in-disguise, as it introduces her to the town’s new doctor, with whom she begins a risky affair. The film suffers a little from some uneven pacing, some jerky shifts in tone, and also from some unnecessarily repeated messages (a husband doesn’t need to shout “Make me my dinner” ad nauseum for us to understand that he’s a bad guy!). Nonetheless, though, Russell has made the most of this showcase, channelling a grace to rival Natalie Portman, while all the supporting cast members are equally memorable in their portrayals of the idiosyncratic characters that surround her. And don’t even get me started on the electric chemistry that sparks between Jenna and the doctor (Nathan Fillion). With a powerfully heart-warming conclusion, Waitress may well be the romantic comedy of the year.
Rating: 8.9
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