Stillwater

 

Run Deep

Stillwater
USA 2021
Directed by Tom McCarthy
Dreamworks

Okay, just a short review of a long but solid film. I’ve been wanting to see Stillwater since I first caught a trailer for it in my local cinema a couple of months ago. I have a soft spot for Matt Damon since seeing him in films like The Bourne Identity and Dogma although, I don’t exactly go and see everything he’s in. I think he’s a remarkable actor though and I think sometimes he could do better with his choice of roles. And, heck, this movie is definitely one of his better choices.

Stillwater refers to a place in Ohio where Damon’s character, Bill, lives and works in construction... when he can’t get work digging holes for oil rigs. However, five years before this movie begins, his daughter Alison, played by Abigail Breslin (Little Rock in the Zombieland movies), is accused and found guilty of murdering her Arabian girlfriend, where she’s studying in Marseilles in France. Just after this movie starts, Bill goes to Marseiiles to visit his partially estranged daughter in jail and it’s then that he gets hooked into the possibility his daughter brings up of some new evidence that might prove her innocence and name the real murderer of the girl.

So, not being a rich person and unable to interest either his daughter's lawyers or being able to afford a private detective, he stays in Marseilles, picking up construction work there and tries to clear his daughter’s name himself. In the process he is befriended by an actress, Virginie, played by Camille Cottin (who can help him translate stuff as he doesn’t speak a word of French) and her young daughter Maya, played by Lilou Siauvaud, who he becomes a kind of father figure to.

And that’s really all I want to say because a) I don’t want to spoil it for you and b) because you will probably reach your own conclusions about how the story is going to go way before many of the characters cotton onto what’s going to happen. I will say, though, that  it’s a very dramatic film and the actors are all absolutely amazing in this. Damon fleshes out his ‘roughneck’ character as being a deeply religious man and someone who is busy redeeming himself for his past sins and trying to do the right thing by both his daughter and himself.

The photography on this one uses a lot of hand held camera stuff. It’s not especially jerky or unwatchable in any way but it’s one of those kinds of movies where the camera is responsive to capturing details and actors as they come up and following through the impetus of the shot accordingly, rather than using either big sweeping movement or, indeed, all that many static shots. What this means is that the film projects a kind of voyeuristic, fly on the wall atmosphere which is surprisingly not ruined by the great Mychael Danna’s low key score when it kicks in for the odd scene or two, here and there. This makes for some very immersive viewing and, despite it’s length, it never fails to be anything but an interesting and compelling drama.

Now, there is one thing which is a shame, in that there really are no surprises in the movie. You will probably twig both a certain ‘third act’ plot twist way before it comes along and you’ll probably figure out how and where the various characters are going to end up before the story’s finish. Sometimes this can ruin a movie but, I would say that in this case it really doesn’t do much damage and, well, sometimes the expected endings are clung on to because they happen to be the ones that work the best. It’s a shame, though, that one of the scenes near the end of the movie, where there is supposed to be a lot of suspense and tension, is kind of booby trapped by a shot a few minutes before which suggests that one of the key characters is not under as much threat as they themselves think they are. Which was a shame but, like I said, didn’t really harm the film any.

So, yeah, I said this was a short review and I meant it. Stillwater was an entertaining slice of life style drama which is mostly effective and which certainly entertains. It does kind of have that ‘Hollywood trying to take itself too seriously’ stamp on it but, again, it doesn’t harm the final product and it’s an enjoyable watch. It felt to me like it’s one of those films which Jack Nicholson that might have latched onto and won and Oscar for in the early 1970s like Five Easy Pieces and Matt Damon does a very good job of that kind of part. Definitely one to catch if you like those sort of dramas. I’m really glad I got to see this one. 

Zombieland - Double Tap

The Tappening

Zombieland - Double Tap
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
2019 USA
UK cinema release print.

Wow. it’s been ten years already, to the month apparently, since the first Zombieland hit cinemas and received a warm welcome from audiences across the globe. It had a certain easy charm and a lot of gut wrenching humour in the movie but it’s taken a while to get to this sequel, which is also set quite a time after the first film, with the four main actors reprising their roles... Woody Harrelson as Talahasse, Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus, Emma Stone as Wichita and Abigail Breslin as Little Rock. Normally when a sequel takes a long time in its gestation period, the cast and crew are always quick to say that they were waiting until the script was properly developed and right and, you know what? I wouldn’t have minded it a bit if they’d have claimed the same thing about this one because, if anything, Zombieland - Double Tap is even funnier and at least as smart and self aware as the first movie.

This film starts with our four friends making their way through the post apocalyptic Zombieland and using The White House as their home before things get messed up and the two girls take off again. Columbus re-finds love... okay, re-finds sex... when he discovers the hilariously airheaded Madison, played by Zoey Deutch and things get even sillier as the writers do not use her as a throwaway character and she has a role to play in this... including making Wichita jealous when she regroups with the other two.

Why does Wichita come back? Well, Little Rock has found love with a peaceful but impossibly naive pacifist who is taking her to the ‘safe haven’ of Babylon, populated by peace loving folk who burn all their weapons and turn them into jewellery. Trouble with that is... things are getting even more dangerous out there in Zombieland, with a new breed of hard-to-kill zombies beginning to appear. So the remaining four go on a road trip to catch up with her and, on the way...

... they meet a few new characters, in addition to Madison. There’s Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch, for example, playing bizarrely similar characters to Talahasse and Columbus, which may seem like a bit of an obvious ploy for comedy antics and, indeed, it is... but like the first film, the writers are well aware of what they are doing and make sure the audience know they are not trying to dumb it down for the viewing public. The scenes with these two are actually very funny and they don’t outstay their welcome. Also, one of my favourite actresses, Rosario Dawson, gets a pretty decent role here as another new character, Nevada... so I was happy.

There are quite a few shout backs to the original movie in this one... so if you haven’t seen it in a while, you might like to re-watch it quickly before going to see this... like a wonderful scene where our main protagonists find out that Columbus’ accidental killing of Bill Murray (playing himself) in the first movie has spawned a verb amongst the surviving human population in those areas. There’s also Columbus’ rules and various typographic shenanigans lit up on screen via the use of CGI which really move the film along and tug at the funny bone in some cases (try and read them all because there are some great throwaway lines hidden in the words here).

Now, it would be true there are no real surprises in the movie... a ploy where something happens to one of the characters halfway through the story to cause their hasty exit from the film for a while didn’t fool me one bit, for example, with exactly what I thought was actually going on (down to the specific manifestation of symptoms... trying not to spoil it here) actually turning out to be the case. However, because the script is so intelligent in terms of the dialogue and the way that dialogue functions, which seems to be a trait built into the cynicism of the characters, thus allowing the audience to know that they are ‘in on the joke’... means that even the ‘not so surprising surprises’ are not exactly disappointing and, honestly, just add to the fun here. In fact, I rarely laugh at comedies (even when I love them) but this one did get a good number of chuckles from me during the screening.

Also, like the first one, the film doesn’t skimp on the goriness normally associated with the zombie genre (even zombie comedies like this one) and, although it does kind of 'normalise' the violence somewhat... in a non-jaded manner... it does also get a few laughs on occasion, especially when Columbus is running us through the zombie-types which they have now become known to the group as.

And, this was a near perfect movie for me. If I had to say the one thing that disappointed me about this one, then I’d have to say it’s that there are no references to Twinkie Bars in the sequel, given that they played such an important role in the first film. Honestly though, it doesn’t really matter here because the quality of the script is such that I’m willing to forgive small character continuity traits like this and, as Columbus points out in his running voice-over narrative at the start of the film, the characters have moved on a little since the first one. There was even a true moment of suspense towards the end of the film when the fate of one of the main characters hangs in the balance... which was pretty good going from the director here, since it’s a comedy.

So there you go. That’s me more or less done on Zombieland - Double Tap other than to say, if you liked the first movie then you’ll probably really like this one and, a quick word to stay around past the credits... there are mid credits and post credits extra scenes, both a shout out to a specific, audience pleasing sequence in the first film so, you know, don’t run for the exits when the end credits start playing out. Also, if you do stay, know that it’s actually Woody Harrelson covering a song over the end credits too so... you know... stay in your seat for a bit.

Maggie

Maggie Trousers

Maggie
2015 USA/Switzerland
Directed by Henry Hobson
UK cinema release print.

This is an amazing film.

I've probably made it abundantly clear in a few of my past reviews that I've long been a fan of Arnold Schwarzenneger. Not all of his films, for sure... he's made a fair few clunkers in his time and his choices of roles haven't always been something I'd want to see... but as a solid actor it’s hard not to appreciate him. I first saw him at the cinema in a film called Cactus Jack opposite Kirk Douglas, on a double bill with one of the Nicholas Hammond TV to movie versions of The Amazing Spider-Man. But it was when I went to the cinema a few years later to see him in the first release of Conan The Barbarian that I really took notice of who he was.

Now, to be fair, Schwarzenneger is probably best known as a personality... and I mean that in the best sense. He's a star and one of the few internationally recognised, larger than life actors who are famous for his on screen image. In this sense, he's the closest thing we've got to a modern John Wayne type, old Hollywood style actor. That being said, I think his likeable tough guy personae tends to overwhelm people’s perceptions of him and he's rarely given credit for what he actually is... a damn good actor. It helps to be a major star but his thespian skills are a heck of a lot better than people realise, I think.

Which is why I was so desperate to see his new film Maggie. Okay, so it's a zombie movie, granted, but it's a low budget zombie movie with a distinct lack of action... a genre Schwarzenneger is best known for, although there is a little action or implied action thrown into a couple of the sequences. There’s also not as much emphasis on horror as you might think... although there are a few very suspenseful moments where you will be in fear on behalf of either Schwarzenegger’s character Wade or his wife Caroline, played by Joely Richardson. However, this is more of an exploration of the dynamics of a family who know they are going to lose their daughter to the slowly decaying caress of a terminal and dangerous-to-others disease which is gradually turning her into a killer zombie, more than anything else.

The plot set up, such as it is, is really simple and certainly doesn't get any more complex as it continues... but this is not a bad thing especially and works pretty well for a small scale movie like this one. It shows us, right from the start, a world plunged into the middle of a zombie virus... although the zombies are not labelled with the 'Z' word here. To give them a little more credibility, perhaps, the victims of the virus are referred to as ‘necroambulists’, possibly as a nod to the most famous cinematic somnambulist of all time, Cesare, the sole occupant of The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari. Like the variants in 28 Days Later and its sequel, these are not monsters who have come back from the dead but people who have succumbed to infection, via the bite of a another infected person. In all other ways, though, the human victims of the disease are being slowly reduced to the shambling counterparts popularised by George A Romero's early Living Dead movies.

In a way, the film could be likened to a drawn out version of the scene in Romero's original Dawn Of The Dead, where the friend who was bitten falls sick and then slowly dies... before popping back up as a zombie. The difference being that there's no death to zombie moment here... the victim becomes slowly more zombie-like and there's a slightly different kind of pay off at the end of this movie too.

Like the majority of zombie movies, the virus and its origins are a mystery and everyone just goes about their daily business living with, and adapting to, a world which imposes curfews on the streets and where you wait with your infected loved ones until the police come to take them to quarantine. In quarantine, they are thrown in with a load of similar, unfortunate people until they start eating each other and their 'wardens' can see that all trace of their former humanity is gone. Then they are given a drug to kill them which, for the dramatic purposes of this movie, is an extremely painful poison for your zombie stricken relatives to have to struggle through.

Schwarzenegger’s character, Wade, is first seen driving to a hospital compound to take Maggie away with him to his relatively isolated farm. The film becomes about making the most of the last days with his daughter and how to make the choice between letting the cops take his kin into quarantine, giving her the illegally acquired drug himself or, the more humane but difficult option, a swift bullet to the head to end her suffering so that she can't harm others. It’s a pretty bleak film, in many ways.

Schwarzenneger really shines in his heartfelt and dramatic performance here. I've heard some people say that this is his best performance in a movie and they might be right. Like I said, though, I've always thought of him as a good actor and I think what we're seeing here is a very small scale film (the lowest budget he's had since the first of The Terminator movies, which was pretty much a B-movie when it came out) and it allows his natural acting abilities to show through. He's not punching someone or driving at high speed through explosions and, as a consequence of that, some people are maybe just waking up to the fact that he's a very expressive actor and, even when he doesn't have a lot of lines, he can give a lot of emotion and inner monologue rendered as subtle facial expression. I'm hoping this movie will maybe stop straight jacketing him to mostly action roles. He's extremely good in this and people need to see it.

The other star of the show is, of course, the title character herself, played by Abigail Breslin. She does an a absolutely fantastic job in this and although a lot of that is supporting Schwarzenegger’s performance as her tragedy bound father, she is also amazing in the scenes she shares with fellow teenagers or with Joely Richardson as her cautious mother. The writer sets up the rules of the zombies particular to this film anecdotally from a couple of sources and some of the later, two hander scenes between Maggie and her mother or father are actually extremely suspenseful because the audience knows what signs to look out for. You will be on the edge of your seat to find out who she's going to take a bite out of first. It all gets very taut at certain points in the running time before heading towards what is actually a really charming ending to the movie, exploring the idea that sometimes, even if a person becomes a ravenous, flesh eating zombie, its possible for that creature to retain a certain sense of its essential humanity.

The film is shot with a kind of constantly moving, reactive camera which tends to focus on scenes where there is not a great deal of movement. Little jiggles to the camera with micro-movements to keep the image slightly shifting is what seems to be going on here. Almost like a found footage movie but on a much more subtle scale. I'm not the biggest fan of this technique but it does give the camera a slight feel of reacting to the characters and events on screen “as it happens” and I guess it's one way of building up a level of credibility with your key players. It's fashionable at the moment and I've seen it used a lot on TV in recent decades on shows such as Firefly and the rebooted Battlestar Galactica. It works really well here, though, and I didn't find it that distracting, I’m glad to say.

Director Hobson also tends to cut away to little details of the acting and away from the main action and I thought this technique worked pretty well the way he managed to pull it off here. So he will cut away to a close up shot of Schwarzenneger turning a key on his petrol tank, for example, or cut to his hand picking up a photograph and recording the detail there. It's good stuff and it certainly helps enhance/capture the subtleties of the wonderful cast in this film, all of whom are absolutely excellent, whether they are in a major or minor supporting role. And it's similarly enhanced by a fairly low key but incredibly moving score by David Wingo, which really does deserve to get a proper CD release rather than the stupid digital download it's currently been lumbered with.

And that's about it. A different film for some Schwarzenegger fans to have to adjust to and I really don't think it's been very well marketed, to be honest. In this country at least. I went to the opening evening showing at my local and they put it in the smallest screen they had. That was arguably a wise move on the part of the cinema I guess because, including me, there were a total of eleven people in the screening and around three of those walked out half way through. So not living up to people's expectations of an ‘Arnold Schwarzenneger movie’ for sure but, honestly, one of the most impressive films he's been involved with and I hope this movie will help potential directors and producers in Hollywoodland realise that he's capable of doing far more than what people have been used to seeing him do over the decades. Whether you're a fan of the actor or not, if you want to see a serious dramatic film about issues and emotions raised by the implications of a fictional zombie virus... this film is it. Maggie is a triumphant movie for all involved and, if you are a fan of the genre, then you certainly won't want to miss this one. Catch it soon, before it disappears as quickly as it came.