Peter Machen on ‘Jeff, Who Lives at Home’

Posted on November 9, 2012 by admin
Film: Jeff, Who Lives at Home
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass
Screenwriters: Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass
Starring: Jason Segal, Ed Helms, Susan Sarandon, Judy Greer, Rae Dawn Chong
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥

Jeff, Who Lives at Home is an exercise in muddled meaninglessness disguised as something approaching an edgy, low budget independent film. The film tells the story of two brothers, Jeff (Jason Segal) and Pat (Ed Helms), neither of whom have exactly embraced – or been embraced by – the full breadth and width of the American dream, and both of whom are on their way to middle-age. Jeff, as the film’s title tells us, still lives at home with his long-suffering mother Sharon (Susan Sarandon) and is obsessed with the Mel Gibson film Signs, looking for hidden meaning in the texture of everyday life. A committed pothead, he has no job to speak of, and the only task on his list for the day in his life which the film chronicles is to replace a broken slat in a cupboard door. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Cloud Atlas’

Posted on November 2, 2012 by admin
Film: Cloud Atlas
Country: German/USA/Hong Kong/Singapore
Year of Release: 2012
Directors: Lana and Andy Wachowski, Tom Tykwer
Screenwriters: Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, Tom Tykwer
Starring: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥½

Cloud Atlas is a remarkably ambitious film that chronicles a number of interconnected narratives played out across continents and centuries. Based on the critically acclaimed novel by David Mitchell, the film is unusual in that it is directed by two separate directing teams, the Wachowski siblings, previously responsible for the Matrix trilogy, and Tom Tykwer, the German director made famous by Run Lola Run. The two teams directed separate segments of the films in separate locations, with the various stories subsequently edited together into a fast-paced narrative that attempts to distil history into something akin to a recognisable pattern of love, freedom and desire sprinkled with human foibles, courage and failure. Continue reading →

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Copposites Attract

Posted on October 19, 2012 by admin
Copposites provides a fresh and uniquely South African treatment to the classic identity-switch comedy, writes Peter Machen.

I have to admit that I’m not a fan of the body-switch comedy, a theme that pitches up on our screens every few years and includes such middling non-classics as Freaky Friday, Visa Versa and Big. And yet, at the Durban International Film Festival earlier this year, I found myself laughing my head off to Copposites, along with some of Durban’s most dedicated cinemaphiles. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Moonrise Kingdom’

Posted on October 19, 2012 by admin
Film: Moonrise Kingdom
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Wes Anderson
Screenwriters: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola
Starring: Jared Gilman, Kata Hayward, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Bruce Willis, Billy Murray, Harvey Keitel, Tilda Swinton
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥

I’m such a big fan of Wes Anderson’s beautifully saturated oeuvre that I found myself in the unusual position of feeling a little disappointed with myself for not enjoying Moonrise Kingdom, his latest tour de force in beautifully stylised idiosyncrasy. And not just disappointed but slightly sad, as if discovering that an old and much-loved friend has changed in some small and fundamental way, and is not quite the person I thought they were. More to the point, I found the movie unsatisfying and, as it moved through the course of its 94 minutes, I found myself feeling a little bored – experiencing the same kind of drag that I experience in the by-the-numbers films that constitute the bulk of the contemporary cinema circuit. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Prometheus’

Posted on October 12, 2012 by admin
Film: Prometheus
Country: USA/UK
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriters: John Spaihts, Damon Lindelof
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Logan Marshall-Green, Michael Fassbender
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥½

British filmmaker Ridley Scott is one of the few directors in Hollywood whose big budget productions tend to meet with both critical and commercial success. From Thelma and Louise to Black Hawk Down to Gladiator, Scott’s oeuvre is remarkably diverse, his narratives bound together with a careful attention to detail, human experience and narrative plausibility. But while these and many other films have helped to expand Hollywood’s monolithic footprint, it is largely through two of his early films that Scott has garnered the respect and loyalty of film fans around the world. With Blade Runner and Alien, Scott set the bar for big budget science fiction very high indeed, and despite the wealth of CGI-rich sci-fi that has graced cinema screens in the three decades or so since the director first ventured into the future, few films have managed to exceed the depth, scope and precision of his vision. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Taken 2’

Posted on October 12, 2012 by admin
Film: Taken 2
Country: France
Year of Release:
Director: Oliver Megaton
Screenwriters: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
Starring: Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace
Review: Peter Machen
♥½

Twenty minutes into a film I can usually – but not always – tell with a great deal of certainty whether a movie is any good or not. Sometimes 10 minutes is all it needs, and occasionally five minutes is enough to tell whether a film is a stinker or a masterpiece or somewhere in between. With Taken 2, 30 seconds into the first scene of dialogue was all it took. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Premium Rush’

Posted on October 5, 2012 by admin
Film: Premium Rush
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Director: David Koep
Screenwriters: David Koep, John Kamps
Starring: Joseph Gordon Levitt, Dania Ramirez, Michael Shannon, Jamie Chung
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥½

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of my favourite actors to emerge in the last decade or so. His wiry frame and kind, sympathetic face are capable of commanding a strong screen presence, and, given the right role, his casting in a film can raise the tone of proceedings. But there’s that caveat –  ‘given the right role’ – something that Hollywood’s not always fond of doing, particularly if the actor or actress in question is even remotely leftfield. So, while Hollywood has done an enthusiastic job of appropriating the young actor’s substantial talents, Gordon-Levitt doesn’t always get the roles he deserves. He is essentially an indie actor, an amalgam of nuance, charisma and low-key conviction and has produced excellent work in films such as Greg Araki’s Mysterious Skin, Rian Johnson’s Brick and even Christopher Nolan’s sprawling Inception. But in big budget potboilers such as The Dark Knight Rises and Premium Rush, Gordon-Levitt’s luminescence is entirely wasted. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Dredd 3D’

Posted on September 28, 2012 by admin
Film: Dredd
Country: UK/USA/India
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Pete Travis
Screenwriter: Alex Garland
Starring: Karl Urban, Lena Hedley, Olivia Thirlby
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥½

I’ve got admit, I didn’t have very high hopes for Dredd 3D, the latest onscreen reincarnation of the well-loved 2000 AD character. In fact, I’ve become so inured to comic-book heroes being drained of all vitality, that I didn’t even expect the film to be remotely interesting. And so, I was surprised to find myself enjoying a franchise-based movie for the first time in what seems like many, many years. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Ruby Sparks’

Posted on September 28, 2012 by admin
Film: Ruby Sparks
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Directors: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Screenwriter: Zoe Kazan
Starring: Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Annette Bening, Antonio Banderas, Chris Messina, Steve Coogan
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥♥

Little Miss Sunshine (2006) is one of my favourite films from the last decade. Which is not to say that I think it’s one of the finest films from the period – sometimes personal taste and resonance can overpower critical discernment – but it’s deep sense of humanity combined with an absurdist hilarity warms my heart just thinking about it. Ruby Sparks, the second outing from talented directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, far exceeded my expectations, fully satisfying my critical faculties while maintaining the warmth and idiosyncratic intelligence of their debut. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Monsieur Lazhar’

Posted on September 21, 2012 by admin

Film: Monsieur Lazhar
Country: Canada
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Philippe Falardeau
Screenwriter: Philippe Falardeau
Starring: Mohamed Fellag, Sophie Nélisse, Émilien Néron
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥♥

When we watch gritty dramas, we tend to think that we are watching works of realism or naturalism. The truth is, though, that any work of art is constructed and stylised, its creator making a large number of choices between that which is included in a narrative and that which is left out. This happens for many reasons, including the fact that an author or artist wants to make a work engaging to its audience (true realism, some would argue, is usually insufficiently exciting to constitute entertainment) and the fact that by heightening certain aspects of reality beyond the real, we make a work appear more real (Van Gogh’s windswept landscapes create a greater sense of experienced reality than a ‘realist’ depiction of the same landscape). And so what would appear to be a particularly straight-forward concept is very far indeed from simple, a fact to which decades – and in fact millennia – of arts-writing and theoretical musings can attest. Continue reading →

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