Blu-ray Review - Two Faces Of January (2014)

Watch The UK Trailer For The Two Faces Of January But Who Should You Trust?

GFF2013 - Everybody Has a Plan (Todos tenemos un plan) Review

Ana Piterbarg's Argentinean drama, Everybody Has a Plan, may be lying as I struggled to detect a clear plan in it whatsoever.

Everybody Has a Plan follows Agustin, a middle-class man who seeks an escape from the confines of his life and family. The arrival of his criminal and terminally ill twin brother, Pedro, provides that escape. Agustin murders Pedro, yet soon becomes embroiled in his deceased brother's criminal past.

The main issue with Everybody Has a Plan, is the sheer lack of narrative drive and focus with the feature lethargically dragging from one scene to another. A narrative involving the relationship between twins should be thrilling (Just look at Dead Ringers, or even Van Damme's Douple Impact), but this only receives around ten minutes of screen time here. Instead we see Agustin venture to rural Argentina and lay low in a shack, for what feels like an eternity.

Quiet, low-energy narratives can work if building a sense of foreboding or with the aim of escalating to something more substantial, however this never seems to arrive in Everybody Has a Plan. Pitebarg's feature lacks any sense of atmosphere or passion, and I struggle to interpret exactly what sort of audience this is aimed at. Surely it is not Viggo Mortensen fans? Mortensen is the least-engaging that I've ever seen him , in a performance void of depth or sense of natural charisma. Whilst in this mode, Mortensen struggles to carry the film independently, instead simply merging into the scenery.

Pitebarg does successfully capture the picturesque quality of the rural Argentina, showcasing the rural shacks set amidst the gloomy canals. However, this is unlikely to maintain your interest for the somewhat bloated 118 minute runtime.

Despite high hopes, Everybody Has a Plan lacks any narrative drive, simply trundling along at a snail's pace. A flat performance from Mortensen and lack of atmosphere, further the tedious nature of Piterbarg's feature.

Andrew McArthur

★1/2☆☆☆

Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Soledad Villamil, Daniel Fanego
Director: Ana Piterbarg
Certificate: 15 (UK)
Release: 10th May 2013 (UK)21st February 2013 (Glasgow Film Festival)

On The Road Review

★★1/2☆☆

Sam Riley channels Jack Kerouac in Walter Salles's adaptation of the author's cult book, On The Road, loosely based upon Kerouac's own jaunt across 40's USA.

Often considered a prime example of that most tantalising of literature, the "unfilmable" novel; Salles has succeeded in bringing Kerouac's vision of travelling excess to the screen in a manner which is both laudable for it's visual impact, and excruciating for it's navel-gazing pomposity.

Living in New York in the 1940's and, having just lost his father , Sal (Sam Riley) finds himself in limbo as he struggles to put pen to paper and begin in earnest his life as a writer; spending his time with wittering junkie-poet pal Carlo (Tom Sturbridge), and waiting for inspiration to strike.

This changes with the arrival of the enigmatic Dean Moriarty, a restless, carefree sort, with a girl in every port, an in unquenchable lust for adventure; who immediately charms Sal, and instills in him that same yearning for life on the open road.

Salles's adaptation of the source material is nothing if not visually stunning. Sal's tramp cross-country gives Eric Gautier the perfect chance to plaster the screen in the best that the vast, beautiful country has to offer.

Garrett Hedlund's performance as the responsibility-dodging, serial shagger, Moriarty, is spectacular; brimming with confidence and more than a hint of passive-aggressive arrogance. A realisation of a character who is both endearing for his naive, lust-for-life energy; and terrifying for his total inability, or unwillingness, to cease his wanton trail of emotional destruction.

Riley's Sal has much less to do, too often he's relegated to the role of standby fag-smoker, or backing singer on some tedious bout of improv-jazz. But Riley's performance is laudable too; dripping with tar and croaking along with a twenty-a-day drawl that sounds caked in coffee and ash.

All that visual beauty, and those performances cant', however, save the film from it's crushing sense of pointlessness. On The Road meanders across the screen while it's characters swagger across the country in a state of perpetual aimlessness. Too often the piece descends into orgies of self-reverential beat-influenced poetry, or laughing, preening sessions of tiresome jazz.

For all its visual clout, and individual brilliance; On The Road will make you wish you had the same laissez-faire , drug-induced outlook as it's characters. That way you could just drift away too.

Chris Banks (@Chris_in_2D)

Rating:15
UK Release Date: 12th October 2012 Directed By:Walter Salles
Cast:Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, Kristen Stewart, Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams

A Dangerous Method DVD Review

★★☆☆☆

I know I'm not the only one waiting for David Cronenberg to go back to his roots. The man previously known as “the Baron of Blood” gave us the head-exploding Scanners and the fingernail-popping The Fly. However, of late, ol' Davey Croners seems more about “prestige” pictures than flesh-crawling horror. I'm not even a huge fan of horror, but I've always admired Cronenberg's way making things/ideas/images stick with you, like a splinter in your brain. This is something which I haven't really experienced with his latest output. Unfortunately, A Dangerous Method continues this trend and even struggles to contain anything memorable at all.

A Dangerous Method is based on the play A Talking Cure, which in turn was based on the book A Most Dangerous Method, which in turn was based on real, actual life that bloody well happened. The story follows the career of renowned psychiatrist Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), genital obsessed beardo Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), a woman who went from a certified maniac to becoming one of the first female psychoanalysts. Having only a passing knowledge of Jungian and Freudian principles and no previous knowledge at all of Spielrein, I felt the story was immersive, but only up to a certain point. I wanted to know more about Sabina, but had to deal with Jung and Freud debating whether everything boiled down to cocks or not. Both Fassbender and Mortensen were great, with the mercurial Mortensen giving an especially enigmatic turn as Freud. Less great is Knightley, who spends the first act of the film gurning and maniacally laughing like real mental patients don't. I have yet to be convinced by a Knightley performance and her appearance in A Dangerous Method doesn't do anything to change that. She's not necessarily a bad actor, just bad at making me forget she's an actor. Vincent Cassel also shows up, having a whale of a time as the philandering, polyamorous Otto Gross.

A Dangerous Method is basically a stage play writ large. There's nothing inherently cinematic about it and the film seems to work best when the various brainy people are endlessly arguing the inner workings of the mind and psyche. I liked some of the ideas the film toyed with and especially liked Jung's turmoil over his relationship with Speilrein. The mentor/friend/rival relationship between Freud and Jung was well done too. To me, repression is the big central theme of the film, with Sabina's BDSM leanings being too shocking to even consider in the early 1900s. Jung's repression is also important, with him struggling to contain his wild side and having to choose between animalistic rutting and spanking with Spielrein or the more socially acceptable nicey-nicey family life with his obscenely rich wife.

I just don't know what to really think of A Dangerous Method. It's well acted (for the most part) and deals with some interesting concepts. It made me want to find out more about the real story and the people, but I wasn't exactly entertained watching it. There's no sense of Cronenberg in this film and it could have been made be any number of the more “arty” directors out there. It's technically brilliant, but ultimately unsatisfying.

Ben Browne

Rating:15
UK DVD/Blu-Ray Release: 25th June 2012
Directed by:David Cronenberg
cast:Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Vincent Cassel
Buy:A Dangerous Method On DVD or Blu-ray

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