GOON

I neither know nor care about ice hockey, but I loved GOON!  It's a wonderfully warm-hearted, foul-mouthed comedy, apparently based on the true story of a polite, sweet kid who couldn't really skate but could really fuck people up with fists.  This is apparently a totally acknowledged and accepted part of hockey -  a sport which is, according to this flick, as much to do with taking a pounding as mad skills with a stick and puck.  If only 10% of the violence on screen happens in real matches, I have new found respect for the mad bastards playing it.  Our particular mad bastard - the goon of the title - is Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott aka Stifler).  Patronised by his college-educated family, Doug stumbles into minor league hockey and discovers that, for once, he's needed and praised for doing what he does best. To be sure, he needs to come to terms with the fact that his parents will never really get it, and conquer the anger of his burnt out, mad-skilled room-mate, Laflamme (Marc-Andre Grondin), not to mention beat the crap out of retiring Goon Emeritus, Ross Rhea (Liev Schrieber).  But through it all, he remains the same sweet lunk he always was.

I love the script for its perfect balance of insane violence and right-on liberal intolerance for fag jokes. I love the way the sweet romance is balanced by plenty of gritty observations about life in working-class snow-bound towns and piss-stained tour buses.  Most of all, I love the counter-casting in almost every role.  Jay Baruchel, typically the sweet geek, becomes the wise-cracking, R-rated best friend.  Seann William Scott, typically the R-rated best friend, becomes the sweet-hearted hero.  Liev Schrieber - I mean, serious thespian Liev Schreiber - becomes the muscle-headed retiree.  And best of all, we have Alison Pill - who invests so much messed-up good-hearted flakiness into her role as Eva, that we can't but help routing for her and Doug.

Kudos to director Michael Dowse (IT'S ALL GONE PETE TONG) and screenwriters Jay Baruchel (TROPIC THUNDER) and Evan Goldberg (50/50, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS).  This movies was totally unexpectedly hilarious and heart-warming!

GOON played Toronto 2011 and is currently on release in the UK and Ireland. It goes on release in Canada on January 24th.  It is available on VOD in the US on February 24th and goes on limited released on March 30th.

SENNA - a documentary worthy of Ayrton

Never has a movie inspired such tear-stained reminiscence among my close friends and family - some of whom worked in F1 racing - as Asif Kapadia's new documentary, SENNA.  For those of us who watched racing in the 80s and 90s, Ayrton Senna was an icon. Young, handsome, rich, for sure, but more than that -  brilliant at driving in wet conditions, and bold in exploiting a gap to take the lead.  He was everything a racing driver should be. 

Of course, at the time, as a kid, while I knew of his rivalry with the French incumbent world champion, Alain Prost, I hadn't realised just how poisonous that rivalry had been, nor the mechanics of their famous clashes in Japan.  Nor had I realised just how political FISA had been, with its French boss, Jean-Marie Balestre apparently hand in glove with Prost, the Sepp "Colonel" Blatter of his day. I hadn't appreciated how revolutionary the Williams' team use of electronics in the early 1990s had been, and that this had prompted Senna's move from Maclaren run by the true gent., Ron Dennis. I remembered the tragic build-up to race day at Imola 1994, but I had no idea how reluctant Senna had been to race that day.  The memory of that day is still with me. It's like remembering Hillsborough - one of those searing moments where you realise that you are watching tragedy unfold in front of you in real time, and feeling powerless but transfixed - that a young handsome boy who had so much talent had died on, of all things, the seemingly benign Tamburella turn.  

The brilliance of this documentary is twofold. First, that the director and producers managed to persuade the Senna family and Bernie Ecclestone to co-operate - giving them access to the home videos, their impressions of what Ayrton was thinking at crucial moments, not to mention the extensive F1 archives, with footage of everything from on-board cameras, to drivers' briefings, to conversations in the pit. This level of access is unprecedented and results in a documentary that has the freedom of a feature film in terms of camera placing and editorial choices. More importantly, it takes the movie beyond recreation of key races to the emotional state of mind of Ayrton - most crucially in interviews with his sister and team-medic.  

But access is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a great documentary. And SENNA *is* a great documentary. The reason for that is that it has a clear narrative arc (kudos to writer Manish Pandey) and some of the tropes of a classic fiction drama. This helps focus a film that could've been over-whelmed by the sheer weight of material, and become unbalanced by Imola.  Indeed, the wonderful thing about this doc. is that it focuses on Senna's life - gives you a sense of how important his faith was to him, reminds you of his charitable work, situates him within a loving but fearful family, and shows both sides of his character - both the integrity and humility but also the pride and fall from grace in Suzuka 1990.  

The resulting documentary is insightful, well-constructed and powerful.  I started crying at Interlagos 1991 - the sheer force of will that made Senna drive 10 laps with just sixth gear and to lift that trophy in front of his home crowd.  And when the race day at Imola began, it was game over.  That sense of anticipation - the directorial choice to keep us with the on-board camera - and Antonio Pinto's sensitive score....What can I say?  It all adds up to a documentary that is unmissable for F1 fans, but - and here I can speak to the experience of Doctor007 - a movie that works even for those who have never heard of Ayrton Senna.   For Doctor007, SENNA worked as a fascinating character study that gripped him on an almost Shakespearian level.  After all, is there anything more archetypal - more universally translatable - as the story of a young pretender facing an older incumbent - of a man of faith battling the corruption of the establishment - of the under-dog making good - of a good man dying young?   

SENNA opened in Japan and Brazil in 2010 and in Italy, Germany and France earlier this year. It played Sundance 2011 and opens in the UK on June 3rd. It opens in Australia on July 21st.

THE FIGHTER - Bale is outstanding, the rest is cliché and caricature

THE FIGHTER is a good old-fashioned boxing under-dog movie, with all the clichés and genre-conventions that go with the territory. 1. You get a boxer. He's scrabbling around getting beaten up for half the film. He gets a title fight chance - there's a training montage - he wins against all odds. 2. The boxer has a trainer who is self-destructive and threatens to derail the boxer's career. But the boxer really does need him and so they reconcile before the title fight. 3. The boxer has a girlfriend. She really believes in him and protects his interests against all the liggers and users who try to derail him. It's been the same story ever since ROCKY.

In this version, The Boxer is real-life Boston fighter, Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg). He's the stereotypical good guy, but hen-pecked by a manipulative, over-bearing mother (Melissa Leo) and his seven sisters. The Self-Destructive Trainer is Micky's step-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale). Dicky used to be a fighter too, and is living off the memory of the time he supposedly knocked out Sugar Ray Leonard. Like many addicts, he's developed a charming, witty, winning personality out of survival instinct - as a crack-addict he's constantly having to charm his way back into his family's affections. Together, Micky's family put him in shitty fights, needing the money, and emotionally blackmail him from getting outside help. The Girlfriend is Charlene Fleming (Amy Adams), a feisty waitress who sits in Micky's corner, but essentially, rather than liberating him from his family, she just provides another set of commands. Coupled with its straightforward genre-convetions, THE FIGHTER has a straightforward, linear plot. We meet Micky as a third-rate journeyman boxer - see Charlene force a split with the family - only to unite before the climactic title fight. Nothing new there.

The resulting film gives us no surprises. You can predict how it's going to work, and who's going to do what. Most of the characters are caricatures. Silent, frustrated Micky. The evil manipulative mother - a far less subtle portrayal than Livia Soprano, and practically on a level with the animated Mother Gothel in Disney's TANGLED. The Feisty Girlfriend. And the performances are pretty mono-dimensional too. I think Wahlberg has been unfairly blamed for being "absent" - that's what his role calls for. But I really don't get all the praise for Melissa Leo and Amy Adams. Their characters are just crude portrayals of one-note harpies. Maybe I should blame the writing, but honestly, there's nothing demanding or insightful here. Only Christian Bale as Dicky Eklund is given a character with real depth, contradiction and development. He's a man trapped inside a delusion - a fictional character called "the pride of Lowell" that he performs for his fellow townsfolk, crack addicts and inmates. Sure he plays up to the cameras, when the HBO documentarians come to town, but he's playing up to reality too. As the movie unfolds, we see him confronted with his delusion and move towards some kind of self-knowledge. It's a superb piece of writing, and a bravura performance from Bale - as broad as the Joker in the "Pride of Lowell" character, yet also reflective and quiet as the reforming Dicky. Dicky is the real Fighter in this film - and the real emotional centre of the movie. When we see the final frame static capture of the brothers celebrating Micky's triumph, it's Dicky's face we look to. It's his triumph to have reformed, to have been let back into Micky's corner, and to have become a big enough man to allow his brother his success, and to be proud of him. Bale should be getting all the awards this season - but for Best Actor, rather than Supporting Actor.

I guess I've already hinted at what I perceive to be the weaknesses in the script - the broad characterisations and resistance to pushing the envelope. I think there are also real weaknesses with David O Russell's (THREE KINGS, I HEAR HUCKABEES) directorial choices. Essentially, I feel that Russell is living in the shadow of Darren Aronofsky in this picture. After the success of THE WRESTLER, Aronofsky was down to direct THE FIGHTER and lives on as its executive producer. A lot of the way in which Russell approaches the material seems to be "Aronofsky-lite" - a sort of pastiche of the filming style used in THE WRESTLER. It's all hand-held cameras, faux-documentary intimacy and visible grain. Which is ironic because as much as this film tries hard to capture the clothes, accents, and gritty reality of 1980s Lowell, with a script trading to high in cliché, it really could've been set anywhere. Worst of all, David O Russell bottles out of doing anything interesting with the boxing scenes, with the convenient excuse of using the HBO crews to re-create the pay-per-view look.

THE FIGHTER opened in 2010 in the US, the Philippines and Canada. It is currently on release in Singapore, Greece, Australia and Iceland. It opens this weekend in the UK and Brazil. It opens on February 11th in Portugal, Russia, Poland and Turkey. It opens on February 25th in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Norway. It opens in March in Malaysia, Lithuania, Sweden and the Netherlands. It opens on April 7th in Germany.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 6 - FIRE IN BABYLON

This summer I went to Lords for the England-Pakistan One Day International. Sitting high up in the Warner Stand as the England team came in to bowl, playing the match through gritted teeth, I was struck by how poisonous the atmosphere was. Three Pakistani players had been accused - are still accused - of fixing spot events in a Test Match - framed by a tabloid newspaper. In a fit of pique, the Pakistani tour manager had hurled accusations back at the England team. The result was a match played because it would have been a bureaucratic nightmare to do anything else. It was pitiful to be sitting at Lords and to feel alienated from the game I love - the game that had dominated my childhood and still forms the major part of my telephone conversations with my father.

How wonderful then to see FIRE IN BABYLON - Stevan Riley's new documentary on the golden age of West Indian cricket, under Clive Lloyd and the Vivi Richards. It was just pure delight to be sitting in the Vue 5 surrounded by people who also love cricket, nostalgic at the memories of great test matches - watching sheer skill and determination triumph over previous failure and injustice. I laughed, I cheered, I applauded, and I came out feeling good about cricket again - about what it can achieve in a wider context when its players choose nobility over cash. It was like a trip back to my childhood. Is there anything more glorious than seeing great men - Clive Lloyd, Vivi Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Roberts, Holding, Garner - tell us in their own words how they felt through defeat and victory? The racist abuse they suffered? The politics they were living through? The brickbats they faced from the press? But best of all - seeing the pride on their faces at the victory they achieved, not just for themselves but for every West Indian. Because the achievement of that team was not just to dominate - DOMINATE - test cricket for over a decade but to give their countrymen - faced with racial prejudice - something to be proud about. And for the rest of us, what they gave us, was just sheer joy at watching class players play with skill.

The documentary is basically a straightforwardly constructed retelling of the West Indies triumph, in broadly three acts. The prologue sets the context - before 1975 the West Indian team is entertaining but unsuccessful - derided as Calypso cricketers - and paid less than their white counterparts. In Act One, strategic titan and disciplinarian, captain Clive Lloyd, takes a young, focused team to Oz where they are pummelled by Thomson and Lillee's furious, aggressive pace. He decides to take off the gloves, scouring the West Indies for young fast bowlers - Roberts, Croft, Holding and later Garner. In Act Two, the West Indies shocks the world with its deadly pace, pummelling a cocky England, whose captain Tony Greig - in his South African accent - had said he'd make the WIndies grovel - and then pummelling Oz. In Act Three, we are now in the mid-80s, success continues, and the captaincy hands over to Vivi Richards, and we see names like Malcolm Marshall come to the fore.

This story is punctuated with two key political episodes. The first is the Kerry Packer World Series when several players took large amounts of money to play in a renegade series in Australia. At first the West Indian cricket board bans the players, but soon, under public pressure, brings them back. The key point is that in the interim they have become hugely fit and focused thanks to an Aussie trainer. The second episode is far more important. In the early 80s several players took money from the Apartheid regime in South Africa to play there. In doing so they were ostracised at home and had effectively sold their soul - becoming "honorary whites" on the tour. Colin Croft went. Vivi didn't - and in doing so turned down a blank cheque, stopped a run on the team, and basically cemented his status as all round great man.

The key strength of this doc is how many people the film-makers persuaded to appear, and how candid they are. Vivi features large, as you would expect, but Andy Roberts is also really impressive. One of the most poignant clips is of Colin Croft speaking about his South African tour. He starts off very defensively - saying he was just taking money as in the Kerry Packer tour - ignoring deliberately the very different political aspect. But then toward the end, he looks sad and guilty and the camera quickly cuts away. It's discrete and powerful. I also love that the documentary gives voice to the fans - the groundsmen - Bunny Wailer even! - who relive their joy and pride at the team's success.

I guess my only quibble would be what must presumably have been the editorial choice not to interview English or South African players or Umpires to give the other side of the story. Maybe it was part of the politics of this project, to let West Indians own and tell their story, coming back at the tabloid hate, setting the story straight. But the problem with that approach is that you end up with a documentary full of West Indians talking about how great they are. And let's be clear, they ARE great! But no-one wants to watch 85 minutes of uninterrupted hagiography.

Still, I have to say that FIRE IN BABYLON is about as much fun as I've had in the festival this year. It gave me back my passion for cricket and I came home and started watching clips of Vivi and Gordon Greenidge on Youtube. But it's appeal is wider than that. I am reliably informed by my bag-carrier, a Kraut who suffers from never having watched a cricket match, that the story is fascinating beyond the sporting achievement - because it's bigger than that - it's about a people finding self-confidence after years of colonial rule, and forcing the rest of the world to give them the respect they deserve.

Additional tags: Balazs Bolygo; Stuart Bentley; Stevan Riley.

FIRE IN BABYLON does not yet have a commercial release date.

Random DVD Round-Up - WHIP IT

WHIP IT is a pretty conventional, but charming, coming-of-age flick directed by Drew Barrymore and starring JUNO's Ellen Page. It feels old fashioned - in the way the sports movies and coming-of-age dramas used to be, before they got satirised in movies like DODGEBALL. The kitsch feel stems partly from the deliberately down-at-heel suburban production design, and from the fact that the heroine is torn between her mother's obsession with beauty pageants and her own attraction to Roller Derby - and both seem anachronistic. But it also stems a little from the straightforward narrative arc, the fact that the happy ending is never really in doubt and the rather simplistic shooting style. The fact that this is Barrymore's debut directorial feature shows in her rather unimaginative handling of the Roller Derby scenes in particular.

Ellen Page plays seventeen-year old, suburban, Bliss Cavendar. Her mother, seeing it as a route out of town, makes her enter beauty pageants where she has to extol traditional feminine virtues. But Bliss decides to rebel by lying about her age and joining a Roller Derby league. She meets tough women with real lives, learns to be aggressive, and gets her first boyfriend. But, as in the way of these three act coming of age flick (see WAYNE'S WORLD, even), Bliss ends up pissing off everyone who loves her - her best friend, her mum, her dad, and potentially her team. Of course, in the movies, as opposed to real life, when you have a bratty teen "coming of age", everyone is remarkably forgiving and loving.

So, all in all, you have to ask what really is the point of WHIP IT? A movie so familiar it feels like a US version of BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM subbing roller debry for soccer.

Additional tags: Robert Yeoman, Dylan Tichenor, The Section Quartet, Juliette Lewis, Andrew Wilson, Landon Pigg, Alia Shawkat, Zoe Bell, Ari Graynor, Carlo Alban, Daniel Stern, Shauna Cross

WHIP IT played Toronto 2009 and was released in 2009/2010. It is available on DVD and on iTunes.

INVICTUS - A Sports film by Basil Exposition

INVICTUS is a superficial, schmaltzy, by-the-numbers sports movie in which Clint Eastwood dumbs down the social and political history of South Africa, and completely fails to capture the excitement and brilliance of the 1995 Rugby World Cup. As you can tell, I'm pretty pissed off at having to have sat through two hours and fifteen minutes of this earnest but ham-fisted bilge. I will do my best to structure my anger into something like a meaningful review.

The plot is basic. It is 1995 in South Africa. Nelson Mandela is President of a nation still riven with racial tensions. He decides that he will, against all odds, unite the nation behind the South African rugby team, the Springboks, despite the fact that they are an icon of Apartheid. The Springbok captain, Francois Pienaar, responds to Mandela's faith in him, and through rigourous training, the team triumphs and wins the World Cup, against all odds.

The issues are complex. Mandela wants to unite his nation, but this is no hippie vegetarian love-in. He needs white South Africans to feel invested enough in the new South Africa to make it economically and socially viable. He may portray himself as a wise sage, forgiving all and inspiring all, but he is, after all, a former terrorist (no matter how righteous the cause), addressed by his followers as Comrade. Mandela has an interest in creating the image of the wise harmless old statesman that we see given back to us in this film. A better film would have portrayed a more complicated man.

The simplicity of the screenplay is even more evident in the handling of Chester Williams, the only black South African in the squad. He is a smiling docile sort of chap who ignores politics in the one line he is given. Did he really ignore it or was he forced to? How did he feel about the pressure put upon him? How did he feel to be injured in the opening game? We never know.

And what of the attitude of the white South Africans? In this film, they are portrayed as low-level racists - a bit pissed off - a bit disenfranchised - but basically willing to throw it all up for an inspiring Mandela speech and some free world cup tickets. The Francois Pienaar character barely has to move at all - he seems ripe for conversion to Mandela's rainbow nation cause. At one point, I thought the film might delve into the issue of race in the relationship between Pienaar and his more surly players - the players who refuse to sing the former ANC hymn, Nkosi sikelele Africa. But no, Pienaar asks them to sing the anthem; they refuse; game over. Nowhere do we see actual argument or soul searching or character development. All we get are some speeches from Mandela and a magical transformation into a nation united behind the team. The worst the opposition can muster are some pissed off looks.

In Eastwood's "exploration" of the new South Africa, deep social and racial issues are reduced to a pissed-off stand-off in the playground.

Enough for the conceptual weakness. What of the production? This is, basically piss-poor. Locations in Jo'burg and Cape Town are mixed up. Morgan Freeman can't do a South African accent. Matt Damon makes a better attempt but looks like a midget compared to the real Pienaar. Not trusting the innate tension of the sporting events, Eastwood tries to inject a weak thriller element into his film by having Mandela's security guards worry about an assassination attempt. Not trusting the intelligence of the audience, he has characters explain the significance of every single action three times over. The dialogue is hammy: the security guard literally says "Not on my watch." The style is ham-fisted: we see a little black kid trying to listen to the match on the white copper's car radio. And yes, sure enough, by the end of the match, the copper is holding the kid ahoist. And they all lived happily ever after.

Basically, as a cinema-goer you have to decide what you want the movies you watch to do for you. If you want film to skate over the surface of the difficulties in life, and to tell soothing stories - if you want cinema to be as bland and as obvious and as Mickey Mouse simplistic as a mug of Ovaltine, go ahead and watch INVICTUS. But you do have a choice. If you want to be challenged - if you want to think radical thoughts about the racial issues really present in South Africa, watch DISGRACE instead.

Finally, one last point. There are certain moments that you do not cut away from. You just leave the camera standing and let the power of the shot mesmerise the audience. The nine minute rape scene with Monica Bellucci in IRREVERSIBLE is one. The first solo dance scene with John Travolta in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is another. You do NOT cut away from the Haka. You just let the All Blacks scare the shit out of you. That's the power - that's the thing that tells the audience that the Bokke are really up against it. Unless of course you are Clint Eastwood and you have no appreciation of rugby history and are merely shoe-horning a famous match into a schmaltzy sports flick genre picture.

INVICTUS is on global release.