Captain Phillips

'Captain Phillips' is Hollywood’s retelling of the hijack of the container ship MV Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates in 2009. Tom Hanks plays the man himself Captain Phillips.

The Alabama was heading toward the horn of Africa with a full load when it was attacked by two skiffs of armed Somalis. The ship basically puts the hammer down, creating such a wake that the skiffs give up but the next day they are back.

This time they have a better boat and better tactics, they get alongside and board the Alabama. The Somali pirate leader Muse (Barkhad Abdi) and his four henchmen head to the bridge, going through some pretty ineffective locked gates. Once on the bridge they hold Phillips and a few other crew members hostage at gun point. Meanwhile the rest of the crew are below deck hiding.

The crew manage to confuse the hijackers by shutting the power down and one of hijackers cuts his foot in the darkness on some broken glass that has deliberately been left out. Phillips then convinces them to cut their losses, take the money that is in the safe, and leave in the lifeboat. Unfortunately they decide to take Phillips with them. In pursuit though is not only the Albama itself but also the US Navy who have no intention of letting the Somalis get back to shore.

It’s a decent film but for me the whole thing falls down the minute they get into the lifeboat. There is great tension to the film at first, when the pirates are approaching the ship, when they board it and when they’re on it searching for the crew. All this time there is a sense of being trapped in the middle of nowhere with no cavalry about to come over the horizon and we know not who of his crew are going to live or die.

Unfortunately once Phillips is on the lifeboat and isolated from his crew, its story over because we know he lives and for me at least the tension just going down the pan. In fact the last hour or so spent on the lifeboat just seems to goes on and on and crawls to the expected conclusion where a rescued Phillips ends up in the care of the most unsympathetic nurse you've ever seen. I suppose Hollywood often changes endings but I just didn’t see them changing a survival to a death, unfortunately.

The best thing here is the battle of wits and wills between Phillips and Muse, and it is interesting to hear the pirates take on things but it’s not enough. The film needed another angle which it just didn't have. Like a distraught family at home, desperate for news of him, to give the film a much needed emotional angle but it wasn’t there. It all felt a bit hollow in the end and at least 30 minutes too long.

How I Live Now

How I Live Now is based on a book by Meg Rosoff which has won several awards for Young Adult literature, so it’s a book for teenagers.

The film comes with a 15 certificate, plenty of bleakness and its own teenager, an American lass called Elizabeth (Saoirse Ronan) or rather it’s Daisy; she would rather be called Daisy. See, I told you she was troubled but then aren’t all teenagers.

Her father sends her to stay in the English countryside and she’s not impressed but if that wasn’t enough to piss her off, the fact World War III breaks out during her stay certainly was. 

She’s not impressed by much actually; in fact the only thing she is impressed with is Edmond (George Mackay). He sucks her finger after she’s cut herself and she swoons. Most likely because she is terrified of germs and infection and here is someone sucking her blood. Ewww, my hero.

Edmond is one of the young cousins she is staying with along with Isaac (Tom Holland) and Piper (Harley Bird). 

When their mother disappears off to Geneva to possibly help stop the coming war, in which she clearly fails as a nuclear bomb is dropped on London, the kids are left home alone. Martial law is declared and the kids decamp to the barn, where they Daisy and Edmond consummate their friendship.  

Then the military move in, seize them and evacuated them, splitting the boys and the girls up. 

Daisy and Edmond vow to escape and reunite back at the cottage. After awhile sorting potatoes, Daisy flees with Piper in tow. Steeled by the need to be strong for her younger cousin and also by her desire to be re-entangled with Edmund, Daisy deals admirably with the situations thrust at her and proves to be no mean shot with a pistol.

It’s a long journey home and they witness many things before they finally make it back where hopefully Edmond is waiting for her, along with another freshly ironed outfit for her to wear.

It’s an entertaining film and I enjoyed it but it has to be said it all seemed very unrealistic in parts. Right from the opening scene where 14 year old Isaac drives Daisy home from the airport through an unlikely land war amidst a nuclear fallout to the kindly eagle who ultimately guides them home.

It does clear up one thing though. If you want your own teenager to buck up their ideas, let go of their moods and remove that huge bag of chips off their shoulder, the quickest way to do it is to start a nuclear war.

Rush

Vroom Vroom. Rush takes us back to the days of Formula One in the 1970s. In what was, in most people’s eyes, the heyday of the sport. A time before it was dominated by professional sportsmen and technology, when it was still exciting and had real characters driving the cars. Sadly, in those days, a F1 contract also came with the chilling statistic that most years a couple of drivers would be killed. To take such risks meant you had to be a certain type of character in the first place. A nutter.

The story centres on the rivalry between two such nutters, James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl). We meet them both, through their own narrative, back in 1970 racing in Formula 3. Hunt has one of his trademark crashes, goes to A&E and comes home with a nurse under his arm.

This immediately reinforces the image of Hunt as the cocksure playboy of the day. A man who before each race would extinguish his cigarette, finish his pint and reluctantly put down his pit girl before heading off to win the race. He was the man men wanted to be and women just wanted.

By contrast Lauda was the purposeful Austrian professor who took a keen interest in the car he drove and lived a staid lifestyle, all in pursuit of victory. 

In truth they were not such polar opposites. Certainly Lauda, who was a consultant on the film, was the more professional but even he, liked a good party and a good woman or three. Also, far from being sworn enemies, they were actually great pals. In their early days, they shared a flat and probably their women. This bit of artistic licence though doesn’t seem to matter and the film gives us two great characters.

We fast forward through the years to 1975 where Hunt teams up with the eccentrically amateur Hesketh Team. Where, after a good season, he manages to get himself a top drive at McLaren. He now goes head to head with Lauda’s Ferrari.

1976 was a complex season and the film simplifies things a touch but with so much off the track bickering that season, lead always by Ferrari, perhaps that was wise. Even Lauda got fed up with Ferrari in the end and moved on.

The centre point of the film is the German GP at Nürburgring, an epic but horrifically dangerous 14 mile circuit that weaves through the woodland of the Eifel Mountains. Lauda tried to persuade his fellow drivers to boycott the race due to his safety concerns. The drivers refused and on the second lap of the race, Lauda himself crashed and his car burst into flames. By the time he was pulled free by his fellow drivers he had suffered third degree burns to his face and head as well as suffering lung damage. He lay in hospital in a coma and they administered the last rites to him.

At the time Lauda was the championship leader by a large margin. In his absence Hunt set about closing the gap but only three races later Lauda turned up at Monza in his bandages and raced.

It all meant that going into the final race at Mount Fuji, Lauda led by a mere three points. The race, held in appalling wet conditions, saw Lauda pull out not wanting to risk his life again and Hunt recovering from tyre trouble to do just enough to clinch the championship. No doubt he headed home with the trophy under one arm and yet another girl under the other.

It is an excellent film. Hemsworth and Brühl are both impressive and convincing in their roles. The film even manages the rare feat of making the audience root for both of them.

The era is recreated almost perfectly with numerous F1 cars dragged out of retirement and the attention to detail is impressive. All of which successfully transported me back in time to when I was nine years old.

Upstream Color

When you go see your first film for ages, you've got to make it a good one or if not a weird one. So Upstream Colour, which falls mainly into the latter category.

A lass called Kris (Amy Seimetz) is accosted by a man known as the Thief (Thiago Martins) in a night club and gets a worm forced down her throat. Once in her body this worm grows inside her, seems to brainwash her and allows him to control her. He then assigns her a series of odd tasks including making her write out each page of Henry David Thoreau's book Walden, a book which pops up frequently throughout the film. Then he sends her off to the bank, where she signs over all her money to him.

Once she's penniless, he leaves. A nice sort of twist on the woman emptying her bloke’s bank account via his credit card I suppose. He leaves her in a bit of a mess, in more ways than one. She can feel the growing worm travelling under her skin and takes a carving knife to her legs.

At this point, another man, The Sampler (Andrew Sensenig), draws her to him by broadcasting the sounds of natural, that he has recorded, back through some big speakers. He takes her to his pig farm where he surgically removes the worm from her body and transplants it into a pig. It appears that he has a group of pigs that are all connected to different people who have suffered the same fate.

Now no longer physically infected, Kris tries to return to normal life and her job but as she's been missing for some time, she loses it. Then she meets Jeff (Shane Carruth) on a train. At first she tries to ignore him but they already seem to have a connection. It turns out he has also been a victim of the same ordeal. Together they attempt to rebuild their lives and make sense of what has happened to them, as do we, the viewer.

It’s the sort of film where the viewer is supposed to fill in all the gaps. It needs your full attention to attempt to do so and there's not a lot of dialogue to help you out. The film is clearly meant to be puzzling and on that basis it succeeds greatly.

The Sampler, as well as being her rescuer, also seems to be the source of the worm drug. So maybe this is a film about drugs and drug dealers? After all drugs do make people do mindless things, bankrupts them, leaves them under the control of their dealers and even if they recover, they are never the same people again. Possibly.

There are countless theories you could come up with and there are countless theories already out there on the internet.

It’s engrossing but it's not a film that the majority of film goers will appreciate due to its lack of car chases, explosions and general absence of straightforward-ness plus the buzzing of the constant ambient soundtrack will give some folk a headache. Yet, in a year where everyone is making sequels or remakes it's good to see something refreshingly different and outlandish like this.

The Look Of Love

The Look Of Love is a biopic by Michael Winterbottom about Geoffrey Quinn aka Paul Raymond. Raymond was of course a famous entrepreneur... ok, so perhaps he was a porn baron, the self proclaimed King of Soho.

The film opens with Raymond (Steve Coogan) mourning the loss of his beloved daughter, watching old video recordings and reflecting back on his life, as in flashback we get the Paul Raymond story.

Raymond went from humble beginnings in Liverpool to being a success in London where he put on a show featuring nude models as statues, the law prevented nudes moving around on stage at that time. Then he moved on to greater success with his Gentlemen’s Clubs, the sex comedy Pyjama Tops and Men Only magazine. With each new project he pushed further against the boundaries of public decency.

He was though a shrewd businessman, who ignored the countless bad reviews and criticisms. He simply got on with making money, lots of it, and was smart enough to reinvest it in property; most notably in Soho and he became Britain's richest man.

Initially helping him run his business was his wife Jean (Anna Friel) but he wasn't a man who was good at relationships. Whether that was with his own children or with the women in his life and there were plenty of them. 

At first Jean tolerated his countless affairs with the women who worked for him. That is until he meets Amber (Tamsin Egerton), who later becomes Fiona Richmond and the editor of Men Only, his relationship with her results in the largest divorce settlement in British history.

Amber’s advantage over Jean was that she had no problem with three in the bed romps, as long as she was part of them. Well at first she didn’t, eventually she leaves him too.

Meanwhile he is mostly ambivalent to the existence of his children, save for his Daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots) and it is his relationship with her that is central to most of the story. He dotes on her but even there he condones the drug habit that ultimately kills her.

Although Raymond was fascinating figure, he wasn't a terribly likeable one and despite the money, the women on tap and the power, he never seemed genuinely happy. Except that is when he was with his daughter and he gives her a leg up to her death. After which he became a virtual recluse until his own death.

The film is an interesting watch but a bit lifeless. Surprisingly it lacks drama and even plot, possibly the process of condensing his colourful life down to first be book sized and then further to be film sized didn’t leave much, other than a long list of bullet points. The film ended up being more informative than entertaining.

The Paperboy

The Paperboy is an adaptation of a novel by Peter Dexter which isn’t about a little school kid who delivers newspapers.

Set in the late 1960s, it is about a man called Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) who has been jailed for the murder of a local sheriff. Van Wetter is on death row and awaiting execution.

In prison Van Wetter is penpalled by Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman), a woman who has cherry picked him from all the other inmates as her preferred murderer to marry.

Bless enlists the help of two journalists to attempt to get Van Wetter released. These are Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey), a man from the same town where Van Wetter is being held, and his colleague Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo), a black journalist from London. They are assisted by Ward’s younger brother Jack (Zac Efron), a former university swimmer who was expelled for vandalism. He is their driver and ‘paperboy’. Jack’s only real friend is the ex-family maid and narrator of the story, Anita (Macy Gray), who raised him and his brother in the absence of his mother.

Ward and Yardley set about investigating the case, where they find some of the evidence against Van Wetter to be inconsistent and they suspect that he may not have received a fair trial.

Meanwhile, Jack falls heavily for the tarty short skirted Charlotte but she only has eyes for Van Wetter. To the extent that Van Wetter, a man you wouldn’t even want to write a letter to, and Charlotte pleasure themselves at their first meeting rather than discuss the facts of the case.

It all gets even more bizarre when Jack is stung by jellyfish while swimming and Charlotte fights off all the other women on the beach to be the one to urinate on him. Apparently this helps and has nothing to do with Efron being many a young woman’s fantasy.

It is the relationships between the main characters, a generally unpleasant bunch if the truth be told, that keeps us on our toes. Each has sides to their character that they wish to hide and that we probably wished they’d continued to hide.

Ward, for instance, is revealed as a closet homosexual with a fondness for interracial masochism. This puts him in hospital and enables Yardley to print an article on Van Wetter that doesn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Jack, who finds out that Charlotte has slept with Yardley, in order to persuade him to come up with some evidence, tries to stop publication but all he manages to do is to find out that Yardley is actually an American. This is a time when racism was rife in the States and local black men could not attain decent jobs. Even then Yardley had given Ward sexual favours to the get the job.

So it’s all pretty sleazy stuff. All we need now is for Charlotte to offer Jack a sympathy shag, which of course she does and this does nothing to ease his infatuation with her.

As a result of Yardley’s article Van Wetter is released from prison and after taking his fill of Charlotte roughly in every room of her house, he takes her away with him to live out in the swamps.

...and they all lived happily ever after. Err no.  

It’s an interesting film, which you are never totally sure where it’s headed but it all seemed to make sense when it finally got there via a rather ramshackle route. It has to be said that Cusack is terrific and Kidman plays yet another deluded lonely soul but all the cast are good. Recommended.