MOVIE REVIEW: Shame

Fassbender is magnetic...Get it? Anyone?

How do you measure the best films you see? What system do you use to determine whether a film is “great” or not? I’m not asking as a reviewer. I’m asking as a moviegoer. When you look back on the best movies you’ve ever seen, why do you think they were the best? More often than not, those movies will be the ones you can see yourself watching over and over again.

But there should be a special place reserved in our hearts for the movies that aren’t easy to relive. We’ve all seen those. They’re dark, they’re real, they’re emotionally harrowing, and while we can walk away deeply moved and impressed by the cinematic power we’ve just witnessed, we can’t imagine going through it again anytime soon. Shame, Steve McQueen’s second feature film, should be added to that list.

The premise is deceptively simple. Brandon (Michael Fassbender, who also starred in McQueen’s first film, Hunger) has a great job and a great New York apartment, but struggles privately with an increasingly disruptive sex addiction. His life is further complicated by the arrival of his free-spirited sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) on his doorstep, fresh off a lovers’ quarrel and looking for a place to crash. As his addiction consumes more and more of his time and energy, Brandon finds his private life suffering, and an air of desperation sets in.

I was immediately amazed by how physically beautiful the film is. The first shot is a wonderfully composed portrait of Fassbender lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. From there, McQueen uses the cityscape to his advantage, crafting magnetic and compelling images even amid the ugliest of human struggles. It’s a juxtaposition that makes the film both visually fascinating and emotionally complex.

McQueen’s skill as a writer also shines here. Shame never descends into clichéd melodrama or becomes a sensationalized tale of moral consequences. It’s the story of a man’s battle with himself, told well and told true, and even in its slowest moments (of which there are a few) that adherence to a genuine, unadorned story keeps it compelling.

The center of the film, though, both logistically and emotionally, is Fassbenber. It’s a masterful performance. Brandon doesn’t talk much, doesn’t ever have one of those great confessional moments that allows him a measure of redemption. The movie’s called Shame, after all, and Fassbender lets it seep into every pore of the character. He’s only now becoming a true movie star, but this film also proves that Fassbender is one of the finest actors of his generation. Mulligan also shines, balancing out Brandon’s often cold demeanor with fire and vulnerability.

Shame is not an easy film to watch, but it is nonetheless an extraordinary one. Sometimes the best films are the most harrowing, and even if you only see this one once, it’s a trip worth taking.

Shame is available everywhere on Blu-Ray and DVD.

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Beginners'

Beginners could have been a very tiresome movie, another tale of two people trying to start over again after leaving their old lives behind, another story of fathers and sons coming to an understanding. Make no mistake, it is about those things, but writer/director Mike Mills finds a way around making any part of his film predictable. It seems like you’re entering familiar territory, but then something magical happens as you sink deeper in to the charming, non-linear embrace of Beginners.

After his mother dies, Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is thrown for a loop by his father Hal’s (Christopher Plummer) decision to come out of the closet after more than 40 years of happy marriage to a woman. Though terminal cancer slows him down, he wastes no time embracing his new lifestyle with what little life he has left, visiting clubs and joining causes and starting a relationship with a much younger man (Goran Visnjic).

We pick up Oliver’s life after his father’s death, as he’s trying to get back in the dating game after he meets the beautiful Anna (Melanie Laurent), a French actress. Chronically unlucky in love, he reflects on his father’s fearless final days as he tries to figure out how to make this relationship last.

In our eyes Oliver’s life becomes a stream of consciousness blending of images, colors, memories and new experiences as Anna’s gentleness and own troubled past draw them closer together. He tries to learn from his father, and also from his long-dead mother, even as he struggles against the same old pitfalls that killed his previous relationships. Through Oliver we see a version of Hal that’s gentle, optimistic and loving, but still very hard for his own son to understand.

Beginners is that marvelous blend of not quite comedy and not quite drama. I say marvelous because, if they’re done right, films like that ring the truest. Life is messy, after all, neither a barrage of jokes nor a barrage of tragedies. Mills finds a way to blend the two in a kind of seamless screen poetry, merging the past and present and the conscious and subconscious masterfully.

If there’s a flaw in the film, though, it’s that Mills sometimes takes his nonlinear framework a little too far. There are moments when the film’s structure seems ready to collapse in on itself with collaged images and feelings. It feels flimsy, and as a consequence some of the emotional weight of what’s happening fades a bit. By the end, though, Mills knows where he’s headed, and even with its sometimes murky storytelling Beginners ends right where it should.

The cast is universally fantastic, but none more so than Plummer, who won his first ever Oscar for his portrayal of Hal. There’s nothing flashy about what he does, nothing terribly flamboyant. It’s all in the eyes, and that you’re able to follow him through even the most subtle moments is proof of his mastery of the craft. McGregor and Laurent also shine, both displaying an often staggering emotional range.

Beginners is not perfect. Sometimes its own ambition gets in the way of its emotional core, leaving some scenes murky and a little too loose. But even with those flaws, it shines as an example of a bold new way of telling a very old story. It’s a moving, enchanting little film, and very easily endearing.

Beginners is available everywhere on DVD and Blu-Ray.

MOVIE REVIEW: My Week with Marilyn

When you’re dealing with a biographical film, casting is paramount. You have to get the right actor to recreate the life of your subject, and the more titanic and indelible your subject is, the harder it is to find the right actor.

My Week with Marilyn is a film about two people who were more than titans. Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier were, and are, icons, gods, irreplaceable screen idols. So, even with all the film’s other merits considered, the biggest question will always be whether stars Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh can pull off the very tall order of bringing these two legends back to life.

They do more than that. The whole film is a truly charming piece of cinema, but the greatest achievement of My Week with Marilyn is the ability of its stars to infuse their characters – so often overblown in the public imagination – with an often startling sense of humanity.

In the late 1950s a young man named Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) manages to snag a job as third assistant director on The Prince and the Showgirl, the new film by Sir Laurence Olivier (Branagh) that will star worldwide sex symbol Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams).

Colin has a glorious time on set, schmoozing with Marilyn’s publicist (Toby Jones) and legendary English actress Sybil Thorndike (Dame Judi Dench) and even managing to score a date with the cute wardrobe girl (Emma Watson). Then Marilyn herself arrives, and the whole production is transfixed by her beauty and often troubling mystery. Except Olivier, whose driven mad by her tardiness, her nervous stumbling through scenes and her constant reliance on a method acting coach from New York (Zoe Wanamaker).

Distant from her husband Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott) and frustrated by her own performance, Marilyn begins to spiral into personal crisis. Colin, completely under her spell, begins to see that even her own handlers are exacerbating the problem, and attempts to be a soothing influence on the most famous woman in the world. Over the week that follows, the pair forms an unlikely bond that’s at least partly romantic, and Colin lives a dream that he’ll remember for the rest of his life.

Colin Clark is a real person, and the film is based on his own memoirs about his time on the Prince and the Showgirl set. The first thing you notice about the film’s tone is how luminous with admiration it is for the people who inhabit this world. We’re seeing this all through Colin’s eyes, a young man enthralled by the magic of the movies and the unfathomable beauty of the unattainable woman he’s just met. Director Simon Curtis and writer Adrian Hodges seem to understand this right from the beginning, and they succeed in smearing the whole film over with a kind of warmth, even in the darker moments. It’s well-shot, well-scripted and well-paced throughout, but the best thing both of them did was simply give quality material to their cast and get out of the way.

Though Marilyn’s name is in the title, Branagh owns the first half of this film just as Laurence Olivier must have owned nearly every room he walked into for most of his life. Not only does he nail the voice (which, as Olivier fans know, is quite distinctive), but he nails the aura. He booms with the kind of ego Olivier was famous for, and steals scenes right out from under everyone else in the film, including Williams. Speaking of Williams, she shines as Monroe. She deserves every accolade she got for the role. The sexiness, the vulnerability, the surprising wisdom and reckless desperation to feel something genuine amid all the Hollywood fakery, it’s all there. She too has an aura about her. It’s more than the sex symbol aura that haunted Monroe all her life, though. It’s the aura of a vivid, shimmering presence. As Monroe was, so too is Williams. The rest of the cast, headed by Redmayne, never struggles to keep up, and in many ways the film often becomes an ensemble piece in which every actor is pulling his or her weight with poise and ease.

My Week with Marilyn doesn’t really shed light on anything we didn’t already know about the characters who inhabit it. It’s not a profound masterpiece pulsing with profound new insight into these iconic people. But it is a remarkably genuine, easy to love film, well-made by a group of very talented people.

My Week with Marilyn is available everywhere on Blu-Ray and DVD.