Inside Llewyn Davis

Set in 1960s Manhattan, Inside Llewyn Davis is a week in the life of a struggling folk musician. It's Reality TV done Coen Brothers' style, only the Coens aren't going to get the character to play up for the cameras now are they? This is warts and all, well just warts actually.

We meet Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) singing on onstage at the Gaslight, then we see him get beaten up in the alley behind it. At the end of the film we find out why and in between we find out about the man himself.

There’s a lot to find out but not a lot to like. He’s penniless, homeless and largely clueless, singing his heart out about ‘life’ whilst drifting through his own. He lives from day to day, gig to gig, couch to couch unable to take care of himself, his friends, his family, his lovers, ex-lovers or for that matter even a neighbour’s cat.

 

We don’t particularly like him, he doesn’t particularly like himself and his ‘friends’ such as fellow singers Jim (Justin Timberlake) and Jean (Carey Mulligan) view him mainly with disgust and loathing.

He is a man capable of performing passionately behind a microphone but not in real life. Perhaps at one point Jean thought he could, as she's possibly carrying his child, but she was wrong and now she wishes to dispose of it.

When Jean and Jim attempt to take their music mainstream and have a stab at stardom, Llewyn wants no part of it feeling his music should be good enough as it is. It is an attitude the viewer should applaud but you don’t because you really don’t like the man. Even when we find out about the unexpected loss of his former singing partner, who killed himself, we don't feel any sympathy for him. 

Normally in films like this the lead character would have got a lucky break or suddenly got over himself, found a nice girl and discovered a personality but this is the Coens... So that isn’t going to happen. He is what he is. A man stuck in his own insular world where his own actions continually cause him to go nowhere.

In the end you want him to get punched in the face again because you have had more than enough of Llewyn Davis. If that is the case then you’ll like the ending.

Clearly we’re not supposed to like Llewyn Davis the man but as for the film... well it’s an interesting idea to make a film about an unlikeable character going nowhere but possibly not a great one. Still, I quite liked it.

The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street is the biographical story of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), a stock broker on Wall Street and is directed by Martin Scorsese.

Belfort is keen to make money, lots of it, but sees his initial job at L.F. Rothschild taken away from him when the firm collapses following the 1987 stock market crash. After hitting rock bottom, he bounces back working for a firm selling penny stocks. 

He quickly discovers that he can make good commission on these trades and quickly forms his own company Stratton Oakmont Inc. He recruits an unlikely bunch of guys to work for him including Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), who quickly becomes his right hand man.

Belfort’s extraordinary business mind ensures that Stratton Oakmont went from strength to strength, making the huge piles of money that he dreamt about. Forbes Magazine writes an article on the firm calling him ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and the name stuck. Forbes also points out that his methods were rather dubious and that he was misleading investors whilst Stratton Oakmont’s staff lived a life on debauchery on the profits.

The film depicts life at Stratton Oakmont as one long outrageous party where the only thing as important as the money is the orgy of sex and drugs that it can buy. Here too Belfort is the ring leader, wallowing in a raucous excess of cocaine, prescription pills, non-prescription pills, alcohol and women.

Yet when he meets Naomi (Margot Robbie) he is smitten and has to have her. Despite her boyfriend and his wife, they are naked in bed the next day. In the end they marry, settle down and have a child... well she does. Belfort continues as before.

 

It is satire and is probably a reflection on today's society and on Wall Street itself. Whether it is wildly exaggerated satire is open to debate.  

Eventually the FBI start investigating and Agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) is on their case causing Belfort to attempt to smuggle all his cash out to Switzerland. Here is assisted by a corrupt banker Jean-Jacques Saurel (Jean Dujardin) and opens the account in the name of Naomi's aunt Emma (Joanna Lumley).

As the FBI close in, he is offered a deal to avoid jail but Belfort decides he doesn't want to be saved, turns it down and eventually the whole company is taken down.

When you read up on Jordan Belfort it becomes apparent that Martin Scorsese kept to the story as much as possible, which is a bit of a rarity for Hollywood. What he gives us is a film that is swift, energetic and enormously entertaining. It did not feel like a three hour production because there is not a quiet moment in it.

It's also one of the funniest things I've seen for a long time but that depends on your sense of humour. It is also likely to offend some people but only if you object to explicit language, explicit sex, explicit nudity, explicit drug etc etc.

It is one hell of a good film and Leonardo DiCaprio is, I have to say, simply terrific. If he doesn't win the Oscar for this, he probably never will. 

The Railway Man

Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) was a signaller in the British army that surrendered to the Japanese when Singapore fell during World War II. Lomax's captivity as a Prisoner Of War was spent working on the construction of the Burma Railway. He was lucky to survive it. After being found with a homemade map and a radio he was tortured to within an inch of his life. Thirty plus years on (the film is set circa 1980) the scars of this dreadful experience have failed to heal.

We meet Lomax, surprisingly still a railway buff, and the film’s love interest Patti (Nicole Kidman) rather appropriately on a train. They immediately marry (or so it appears) but the baggage that he carries with him causes him severe moods swings and nightmares but he won't share the reasons for these with his new wife. 

She has to go visit his friend and fellow POW Finlay (Stellan Skarsgård) to find out why. Then when a photo appears in a Japanese newspaper of the translator Takashi Nagase who was Lomax's tormentor in chief and was now working as a tour guide on the railway, Lomax takes the opportunity to head over to exact revenge.

The key question posed by the film is what would you do if you came face to face with the man who tortured you? Unfortunately the film fails to give a convincing answer.

Probably because too much has been changed from Lomax’s original story. The real Lomax didn’t turn up unannounced and he wasn’t the only one who had been wrestling with his demons. Nagase had been too and had attempted to atone for his sins. The real Lomax knew this because the two wrote to each other for two years before they decided to meet. So the film’s scenario didn’t happen and this is probably why it feels so false.

The film bounces back and forth from the Second World War to the 1980s. From young Eric's (the excellent Jeremy Irving) physical torture to old Eric’s emotional torture as the film overlays a snapshot of life constructing the Burma railway and in the POW camp with a rather thin love story.

That didn’t work either. The fact that the real Eric returned from war, married his pre-war sweetheart, had two kids and then met Patti (also with kids) whilst he was still married and romanced her for two years prior to marrying her was a better back story than the one we got because we didn’t get one at all. The film just feels made up because most of it was and that’s a shame.

It’s not an awful film but it is unremarkable and far too ‘nice’ when it should have been harrowing and eye opening but it simply isn’t. The scenes in the camp are not pleasant yet overall the film seems desperate not to offend. The only time I felt any emotion was when they put photos of the real people up at the end. 

American Hustle

The director David O Russell has produced two of the best films of recent times in the

'The Fighter' and 'Silver Linings Playbook'. He must have been happy with the performances he got from his cast in those films because for his latest ‘American Hustle’ he seems to have merged his lead actors and actresses from those two films.

American Hustle is set in the late 70's or perhaps the early 80's and features seasoned con man Irving Rosenfeld (an unrecognisable Christian Bale), a man with a really bad comb-over. Along with his con lady and lover Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), he cons the desperate men who come to him for loans.

 

Unfortunately they get caught out by FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). DiMaso offers them a choice of jail or collaboration. He wants their assistance in taking down a host corrupt congressmen and casino barons. They agree, reluctantly.

Their way in is though the mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), although ‘Irv’ feels uneasy about conning a man he soon develops a good friendship with. He has another problem as well, namely his loose cannon of a wife Rosalyn (the delightful Jennifer Lawrence). There’s not much love between them but they stay together, loosely speaking, for the sake of their son. She appears highly likely to blow their cover at any point and eventually does.

The plot is loosely based on the Abscam scandal and is great fun through although possibly hard to follow at times basically because there’s an awful lot going on. There are plethora of plot twists and turns amongst the back stabbing, double dealing etc but even if you can’t follow the story, sit back and enjoy the characters. The film delivers a wonderful array of personalities delivered with some very fine acting.

A lot of the audience seemed to find the whole film LOL funny. I didn't think that, a few smiles maybe and Amy Adams’ dress raised a chuckle or two, in a neckline plunging to the floor sort of way.

Not a perfect film but impressive enough I’m sure to bag a few awards this year.