THE DANISH GIRL VENICE 72 WORLD PREMIERE

Watching this film is an incredible experience, it received 10 minutes of standing ovation at the premiere in Venice and I would like to predict that it will become an absolute cult classic and will be showered with oscars. At least Eddie Redmayne's and Alicia Vikander's performance. In terms of oscars and in comparison, Eddie Redmayne is giving Johnny Depp a run for his money (both have already been mentioned in connection to the oscars). Redmayne really ventures into depths of acting where other actors might fear to tread. The film opens with beautiful shots of the reflection of a tree and other images of the childhood of Einar Wegener, a Danish painter who was born in 1882. Wegener got married to the wonderfully vivacious painter Gerda Gottlieb, both of them being painters you just know that something might go wrong, maybe one of them will be more successful than the other? Their relationship is changing slowly when Gerda playfully asks Einar to put on women's clothes in the absence of her actual model and Einar discovers that he enjoys wearing women's clothing and that for the first time in his life he really feels really himself. Eventually Einar Wegener becomes the famous Lili Elbe and stops painting altogether. Redmayne's performance is as beautiful and delicate as Einar Wegener's tree paintings. He allows himself to really become this other person right in front our very eyes without ever being pathetic, alienating or cheesy. Swedish actress Alicia Vikander is the second main character in this picture and just as important, this story is as much hers as it is his. Vikander owns the movie effortlessly, by showing a lot of facets and has a wide range of emotions. The film has a wonderful flowing rhythm and doesn't ever drift off into a boring costume drama mode, but takes its subject very seriously. It's a true story and a bit of research quickly shows that Gerda became very successful with the Lili portraits and later also became the leading illustrator of the art deco movement, but by then the film strongly foccuses on Lili who decides to have an operation to actually become a real woman. The relationship between Gerda and Einar/Lili is very important in the movie, the fact is that they got divorced in 1923, because they were now both women and couldn't be married under Danish law. The film comes across as timeless, the time might be the early 19th century but it has a very modern feel to it. The cinematography by Danny Cohen (The King's Speech) is stunning and makes you feel like you are in a painting for most of the time. Overall this film is a beautiful, delicate gem and it will remain on your mind and in your memory long after you've emerged back from the movies into your own reality. 

BLACK MASS VENICE WORLD PREMIERE, VENICE 72

The title says it all, it's a dark, gritty, slow paced, violent and very dramatic movie which previewed today at the Venice Film Festival.  It's a true story about the unholy alliance between the FBI and Whitey Bulger who is said to be one of the most notorious gangsters in the U.S The year is 1975 and John Connely, who works for the FBI, convinces Bulger, who has been his friend since they were children, to collaborate with the FBI to bring down the Italian mafia. Johnny Depp is tremendously scary and ice cold in this film and executes an amazing, oscar worthy performance. At the press conference at the Palazzo Casino in Venice, Depp claimed that he tried to show him as a human being but I must say that his Whitey Bulger is one scary human being and you don't feel like that you could go for a quick pint with him. Depp's performance is astoundingly different to the gangster in Blow, George Jung who is a much more flamboyant personality, or to Denzel Washington's glamorous Frank Lucas in Ridley Scott's American Gangster. The film is set in Boston and cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi (Silver Lining) sets a sober visual tone with some scenes shot in grey Brutalist architecture which underlines the brutality of the movie greatly. It seems to me that there are many different ways to show the 70's in movies. Takayangi's prefered colour palette is rather dark and pale, he avoids bright colours and strong sunlight. Remarkable about this movie is also that every tiny part in the film has been cast with the best actresses and actors that you can find. The list is long: Benedict Cumberbatch, Dakota Johnsson, Joel Edgerton, Peter Sarsgaard, Juliette Nicholsson, Kevin Bacon and Juno Temple all deliver fantastic performances. The film music by Dutch composer Junkie XL is a very important element in the film and weighs down on it like heavy fog. The film and Depp's performance carries the aura of a thoroughly haunted man who committed a lot of crimes and in the end it leaves you wondering what the point of his existence was. Bulger himself wrote in a letter to some students "My life was wasted" which is very sad, but carries an important message: "Don't waste your life!" One thing is for sure: watching this movie and these amazing performances directed by Scott Cooper is not a waste of your precious time.

Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to watch a very long movie with a plot as thin as the ice on the Thames in London in January and actual plot holes bigger than Alec Baldwins cheesy grin.
Admittedly the opening scene is great, action packed and it's exciting to watch Tom Cruise hanging from a plane (don't try it at your local airport), shouting "Benji open the door". Benji, played by a sparkly Simon Pegg (Spaced) is trying his best to assist his friend. The film tries hard to keep the plot together but whenever it threatens to thin even more, they change location. A great trick, the movie jumps around locations, from London to Havanna, to Vienna, to Casablanca and back to London, it looks like a travel guide for lost spies. Tom Cruise is good, he routinely plays the agent Ethan Hunt and after 4 Mission Impossible films by now he surly knows the character inside out. But Rebecca Ferguson (The white Queen) is a new character and she is a tremendous actress. Her chemistry and timing is impeccable and she's a great heroine. The cast has quite a few British people as an addition to the usual American team, Tom Hollander as British prime minister is hilarious as usual, Sean Harris who is often cast as the steely, hard bitten outsider does a great job as a pretty evil villain and Simon McBurney as head of the MI 6 is also very good. There are a few good camera shots by cinematographer Robert Elswit, particularly in Vienna, but nothing outstanding. The scenes in Vienna are pretty impressive, I'm sure that it wasn't easy to co-ordinate the fight scene with the opera performance in the state opera house. And why does everybody want to kill the Austrian chancellor?
Let's face it, Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation is an entertaining action blockbuster with some astoundingly good acting. Director Christopher McQuarrie who wrote "The Usual Suspects" managed very well to direct a very interesting group of actors.
And in terms of plot, well unfortunately not every movie can have a brilliant plot like the Matrix.

Good Kill

Drop everything and go watch that movie now! Andrew Niccol a director from New Zealand knows his stuff. It's astounding how casual death comes. By pushing one button you can kill a lot of civilians. The Americans have been doing this for quite a few years. Bloody hell. That film really opens your eyes (if they have been closed for a while) I saw it at the Venice film festival last year and it was one of the overlooked contenders. It was nominated for a golden lion and in my opinion should have won but maybe it was just a bit too critical. Ethan Hawke plays a fighter pilot who is now based in Las Vegas and sends drones to Afghanistan but from a cubicle in Las Vegas rather than bombing from above. What an easy thing to do except the characters in the movie are humans and they start to doubt their actions once they've blown up a few civilians. The enemy (the Taliban in Afghanistan) has a face now, because the cameras are so good that you can see the face of the person before you blow them up. Welcome to the future. The acting is very good, Zoe Kravitz joins Ethan Hawke in the cubicle and there are some seriously tense and very well acted moments. Andrew Nicoll creates a seemingly normalish world in a crazy world. There is a parallel world in suburbia when Hawke goes back to wife and child and that part of the movie is  pretty similar to Mad Men. Maybe that's because his wife is January Jones and her performance is similar to Mad Men's bored housewife Betty Draper. They have a seemingly normal life, barbecues with friends over but the former pilot is starting to doubt the mission and the cracks start to show. I would categorize this movie as very much an anti war film. And it's not entertaining. It's not meant to be entertaining! The casualty of war is shocking, the fight pointless. What they are doing surely creates more terrorists. It's a vicious circle. The enemy evil, presumably Taliban men and helpless women. Quite a convenient generalization. Nicoll seems to be conflicted and couldn't resist the temptation to give his characters a chance to be "heros"and "heroines" after all. To decide who to save and who not.
But there's now a new documentary on Al Jazeera which will talk about the other side, the victims who have to live with the drones. Apparently the drones are always there and you never know if they will shoot you. I will be watching it because it is always vital to see both sides. And that one is reality and not just a movie.