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Tag: Paul Dano

QuickView: Wildlife (2018)

“You know what they call trees in a forest fire? Fuel. You know what they call the trees left up when the fires go by? They call them the standing dead.”

Jeanette Brinson

Actor Paul Dano’s directorial debut is a 1960s family drama set in a small town that is surrounded by wildfires, a metaphor for the claustrophobic relationship and sense of impending doom at its heart. Dano’s style is restrained, trusting his actors’ performances to carry the film and he draws out wonderfully nuanced performances from Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal. Both characters are harmed by their own pride, early tension arising when Jerry loses his job, set against the backdrop of shifting gender roles. The focus of Wildlife is really on Jeanette’s erratic behaviour in response to her marital troubles, and here Mulligan excels. The audience perspective is that of the couple’s 14-year-old son, and in key moments Dano chooses to leave the camera on Joe’s expression whilst the audience can surmise — contextually or through audio — what is happening off-screen. This is engaging, if old-school, performance-centric film making, and it serves the material well.

8/10

QuickView: Dumb Money (2023)

“Yo, what up everybody. Roaring Kitty here. I’m going to pick a stock and talk about why I think it’s interesting. And that stock is GameStop.”

Keith Gill

As a Reddit user, I followed the GameStop short squeeze in early 2021 with great interest as several Wall Street hedge funds were blindsided by loosely coordinated action from retail investors (to whom the finance industry derisively referred as “dumb money”), leading to the Robinhood trading app turning on its own users. Where The Big Short and The Wolf of Wall Street are “inside out” explanations of financial manipulation that affected the public, Dumb Money focuses on the outsiders breaking in, a grassroots movement that began on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit. The film is candid about the online community’s propensity for crude and offensive memes, reproduced here with the same weight as archival news footage. Presenting events as a “David and Goliath” story (characters are each introduced with their net worth) is an oversimplification but it captures the underlying emotional arc from hope to outrage. Dumb Money often feels like a zeitgeist movie that captures a specific point in time: the COVID pandemic highlighting wealth disparity, the rapid growth of fintech startups, spiralling student debt, and the new influence of TikTok. Craig Gillespie again collaborates with I, Tonya cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis, though here they opt for a more naturalistic style whilst building tension using David Fincher’s technique of cutting between a multitude of camera angles. The ensemble cast is impressive, Paul Dano standing out in his portrayal of Keith Gill, capturing his cadence but finding emotional resonance as well. As Gill has become a very private individual, there is a great deal of speculative material in this dramatisation, though it leans more toward aspects like the supportiveness of his wife rather than sensationalism. Dumb Money is entertaining without really having a message, Gillespie describing the film as “part of the conversation” in its portrayal of an inherently rigged financial system — there is a perhaps unfounded sense of catharsis as Dumb Money shows many regular folk winning despite the lack of structural change; in reality many retail investors also suffered huge losses, represented here only through America Ferrera’s sympathetic portrayal of a nurse burned out by the pandemic. It is a fantasy, then, but a relevant one.

7/10

QuickView: The Batman (2022)

“Fear is a tool. When that light hits the sky, it’s not just a call. It’s a warning.”

Batman

Matt Reeves’ The Batman is the stylish reboot that (non-comedy) superhero films have needed, with their ever-increasing scale and shared-universe homogeneity. The “Year 2” storyline thankfully avoids yet another origin story, though parallels are drawn early on with the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents. Instead, we see an established Batman dealing with street-level crime (emerging from the shadows like Vader to Michael Giacchino’s imposing brass score), already mistrusted by the police though he is called in to investigate crime scenes and track down leads. Grounded in realism with noir and gothic cinematic sensibilities, The Batman‘s greatest inspiration seems to come from another dark, winged creature, Alex Proyas’ The Crow, with its relentless pursuit of thugs through stylised streets soaked in shadows and rain. It seems most overt when Batman removes his mask to reveal a smear of black around his eyes and matted hair, reminscent of Eric Draven’s iconic appearance. The open jawline of the redesigned cowl allows Robert Pattinson to emote far more than recent incarnations, perhaps essential when he spends so little time as a reclusive Bruce Wayne. Despite spending most of the time as Batman, the action is rather limited though it oozes style: a brief corridor fight lit only by bursts of muzzle flash, or a car chase in the rain with near-zero visibility. It is a rare superhero where the climactic set piece is actually the film’s most satisfying. Greig Fraser’s cinematography deploys sharp camera angles, high contrast and often limited colour in a creative interpretation of some of the most striking Batman comicbook art. The ensemble cast excels, with few simple caricatures. Paul Dano’s Riddler is deliberately ordinary, like the Zodiac Killer crossed with Jigsaw, as the film briefly explores Batman’s complicity in inspiring his villains as well as the Internet incubation of rightwing extremism. An unrecognisable Colin Farrell is underused as Penguin, though the stage has clearly been set for him to take a central role in the future. The Batman‘s chief flaw is in editing, running too long with intermittent pacing issues affecting a number of scenes, but that only slightly diminishes the overall accomplishment.

8/10

Disclosure: I know personally at least one person involved in the making of this film.

QuickView: Meek’s Cutoff (2010)

Meek's Cutoff poster

“We’re all just playing our parts now. This was written long before we got here.”

Stephen Meek

A Western stripped of American exceptionalism, these are pioneers at the mercy of a barren land, not taming it. Meek’s Cutoff prizes verisimilitude of the experience over narrative, which will frustrate many. Even the characters are mere sketches, elevated by an excellent cast who convey both camaraderie and mistrust. Michelle Williams stands out with a mixture of bold resolve and empathy, aided by a lens that tends toward the female perspective. A litmus test is likely your view on a Native American character who neither conveniently speaks English, nor is subtitled, since the pioneers have no way to understand him. With patience, however, Meek’s Cutoff is both memorable and haunting in its simplicity: the unrelenting sun by day, the enveloping blackness of night. The cinematography is also of note, this being a rare modern film shot in the Academy aspect ratio of 1:1.33, with the additional height being used to present vast skies overhead and the landscape dwarfing the wagon train. It is a tiny slice of The Oregon Trail, with less dysentery.

8/10

QuickView: Prisoners (2013)

“Pray for the best, but prepare for the worst.”

Keller Dover

Denis Villeneuve may be my favourite currently working director off the back of his exceptional three-year run with the wildly different Sicario, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. In his earlier Prisoners he explores the world of cerebral urban crime that David Fincher gravitates toward. Cinematic and storytelling tropes mean that crime thrillers typically underwhelm in their third act, either through the obviousness of their conclusion or a sense that they have cheated. Prisoners is a rare exception that carefully ties together the disparate clues scattered during its slow burn build up, but it succeeds moreso because of the wider themes it explores around desperation and retribution. Its subject matter makes for challenging viewing with child abduction, murder and torture (although the film is notably restrained in what it depicts on-screen). All of the lead performances are captivating, but Jackman’s emotional energy is the film’s seething undercurrent as a father who will do anything to find his daughter — yet, unlike the focused vengeance of Liam Neeson in Taken, here his actions are bred from desperation and the audience is forced to question rather than simply being brought along for the ride. Unashamedly an adult experience, Prisoners is exhausting but rewarding.

8/10

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

(CC) BY-NC 2003-2023 Priyan Meewella

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