An uninteresting film about an interesting man

The cartoon which gives this film its title is as close as you can get to an insight into its subject. The single-panel features a cowboy posse staring down at an overturned wheelchair in the desert with the sheriff uttering the line of dialogue that has been co-opted here as the title of this John Callahan biography.

It makes you laugh and then feel bad for laughing. As such it’s a perfect example of the dark, often shocking, humour of John Callahan, a quadriplegic alcoholic whose rage and bitterness poured out onto the page in his crudely eloquent work. Sadly none of this comes out in a film which plays like a Hallmark TV movie about someone bravely overcoming a physical challenge.

This story was a long-cherished project by the late Robin Williams who was a huge fan of Callahan and had teamed with director Gus Van Sant to try to get this off the ground in the Nineties. Williams would surely have brought some of his own mania to the part; instead we have an insipid performance from Joaquin Phoenix and directing from Van Sant who just seems grateful to be making the film at all.

Much of the story is told in a non-linear fashion as we hear Callahan’s story from a series of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He became a drunk as a teenager and then, at the age of 21, he was almost completely paralysed in a car crash. The accident happened after a two-day bender – Callahan (Joaquin Phoenix) wasn’t driving but his fellow bar-hopper Dexter (Jack Black) was. Dexter walked away with barely a scratch; Callahan became a quadriplegic.

The film charts Callahan’s story using the AA twelve-step programme as a framework. This tends to suck the drama out of the story and while there are some decent individual moments there is a general failure to cohere into a sustainable narrative. There are a range of fellow recoverees but they are cookie cutter characters spouting predictable homilies. His therapist/girlfriend (Rooney Mara) is particularly risible.

Some of the better scenes involve an almost unrecognisable Jonah Hill (top right) as his sponsor and one of the few people to challenge Callahan. Hill is the best thing in the movie but there is a sort of doomed certainty to the whole thing.

Callahan’s lived experience must have been dramatic but there is no sense of that here. His epiphany on the road to sobriety is very low-key and his emergence as a cartoonist seems to be incidental. It’s visually interesting, as you would expect from a director of Gus Van Sant’s calibre, but it’s hard to be engaged by it.

Phoenix seems determined to be liked, as Van Sant seems determined that Callahan be likable, and at times it’s a very indulgent process. By all account Callahan, who died in 2010 just short of his 50th birthday, was a difficult man but there is very little sense of that here.

If the film had just a fraction of the emotion and intensity of Callahan’s work it would be a much more satisfying watch.

Halloween is a shocker....in a good way

It’s axiomatic that horror movies tend to reflect our contemporary societal insecurities and there is certainly a reading of recent ‘domestic horror’ successes, such as the Insidious franchise or A Quiet Place (2018), along those lines. Namely that our secure domestic societies are being shaken up by outside forces over which we have minimal control.

That being the case there is something very satisfying about a good, old-fashioned horror movie which is what we have in this incarnation of Halloween. This is a return to the old style slasher movie; it’s very much a throwback to the Seventies and it works well in those terms.

The 1978 version of Halloween, directed by John Carpenter, is of course the film that kicked off the slasher genre. One of the interesting things about this version, directed by David Gordon Green of whom more later, is that it resets the continuity. The Carpenter version spawned a ten-movie franchise, including an ill-judged Rob Zombie grindhouse trilogy, but all of that has been swept away by this film.

There is the 1978 film then there is this real-time sequel in that it takes place 40 years after the first one. Michael Myers is back, Laurie Strode has been the woman who cried wolf for four decades, now she has been proved right. All of her faintly paranoid survival techniques are finally going to pay off as three generations of women are locked in a house with a totemic serial killer. This is a slasher movie for the Me Too movement.

I remember seeing the original in the Odeon in Renfield Street in Glasgow when it was released. It was a sensation, you had to see it or you had nothing to talk about; it became part of the national conversation and my memory is of it playing to packed houses every night.

We had never seen anything like Halloween. It was the first and still the best of its genre and it established all of the themes that are now standard; the ‘have sex and die’ plot points, for example, and of course the narrative trope of the ‘last girl’.

Laurie Strode was the ultimate last girl and it is very pleasing to see Jamie Lee Curtis, the original screen queen, returning in her most famous role. In 1978 she was a resourceful babysitter, now she’s a shotgun-toting grandma who has waited forty years to finish the job she thought she had accomplished in the first film. It’s a character that rather neatly parallels her contemporary Ellen Ripley who was introduced only a few months later in Alien (1979)

Curtis is very good as a woman who is sufficiently self-aware to know that Michael may not have killed her, but he did kill off her chance of a successful and well-adjusted family life. She is estranged from her daughter (Judy Greer), has a strained relationship with her granddaughter (Andi Matichak), and the whole town thinks she’s crazy. She has sacrificed a lot but she has always believed it would be worth it and tonight’s the night.

The film pays a good deal of attention to Carpenter’s version – he, and Curtis are listed as executive producers – but it also has something to say for itself. The first act is a little clunky having a sly dig about the current hipster obsession with murder. Two smug podcasters basically clue us in on everyone’s back story, and even though they are intensely irritating we are consoled in the belief that they won’t be around for very long once they have finished their recapping duties.

The film finds its feet once Michael returns to Haddonfield and resumes his murderous rampage. Again there is an old-fashioned quality to his killing spree. There’s no torture porn here; some of the killings happen off-screen, some are only heard, and some are simply seen as consequences after the event.

The look of the film very closely resembles the original with David Gordon Green’s frame perhaps a little more restless than Carpenter’s. Michael is often on the edge of the frame or just a little out of focus. The effect is to make the audience ever vigilant to his presence and that makes him much more of a threat.

David Gordon Green has had a curious career. He began with well-regarded indies such as George Washington (2000) and Undertow (2004) and then switched to low comedy with Pineapple Express (2008) and Your Highness (2011). But as a viewer he was a product of the VHS generation and, while this is his best film in a while, it also reflects his 70s influences with a very close homage to the original, including 70s pacing. This film feels slower than ‘modern’ horror movies but is none the worse for it but whether that appeals to modern tastes remains to be seen.

Halloween deals in suspense and shock more than gore and is refreshingly free from torture porn. Of course you know what’s coming but the impact comes from the cleverness of the execution and the result is a good old fashioned shocker

Operation Finale could be an awards contender

Since his breakthrough role five years ago in the Coen Brothers Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) Oscar Isaac has emerged as one of the most interesting actors around. Partly I think that is due to his willingness to take chances; his roles since 2013 include films as diverse as Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and The Promise (2016).

Now with Operation Finale he stretches himself again, not as an actor but as a producer. This is a challenging topic; the story of the hunt for Adolf Eichmann is the sort of film that Hollywood studios find it increasingly difficult to finance so in Netflix it has found a perfect fit.

As the ‘architect of the Holocaust’ Eichmann (Ben Kingsley) was top of the most wanted Nazis list after the post-war trials at Nuremberg. When the Israeli secret service, Mossad, gets a tip in 1960 that he is now in Argentina there is pressure to go and kill him, as they did with so many other Nazis. However there is also a feeling that taking him alive and putting him on trial would make an important point about the status of the fledgling state of Israel and send a message to its enemies.

The decision is taken. Eichmann will be smuggled out of Argentina and brought back to Israel. The plan is conceived by Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac), a disgraced Mossad agent who has much to prove. It is audacious and as Mike Tyson said ‘Everyone has a plan until I punch them in the mouth’.

In this scenario the punch in the mouth is a combination of diplomatic nicety and commercial cold feet which means that Malkin and his team have to hide in plain sight, with Eichmann, in Argentina. Meanwhile the nascent nationalist movement in the country, for whom Eichmann and his coevals are a potent symbol, are hunting them down.

Director Chris Weitz has constructed a tense and suspenseful ticking clock scenario which, in terms of recent movies, resembles Argo (2012). But much more interesting is the debate between Eichmann and his captors which takes place in the foreground while the clock ticks down in the background.

This is an essay in evil, specifically in the banality of evil. Eichmann, whose notorious defence was that he was only following orders, at first sees the Holocaust as a matter of scale. It’s a logical problem for him, and one that has to be solved efficiently to manufacture murder on an industrial scale.

Malkin, who in common with everyone on the team has lost family in the Holocaust, has to get him to sign a confession. The trick, as he realises quickly, is to play to his ego which is almost as monstrous as his actions.

These scenes are absolutely fascinating. Isaac is very restrained and focused while Kingsley, who for so long seems to have been phoning it in, gives a performance that reminds you how good an actor he can be. He is by turns witty, cajoling, devious, wheedling, and conciliatory until finally Malkin gets under his skin and he is revealed for what he is.

From the opening credits Weitz gives the film a very old-fashioned look. The story is set in the early sixties and the film looks like it was made not long afterwards but this only adds to the impact of a powerful film with a couple of excellent performances at its centre.

A star is bored

The film business is a high stakes game and the stakes are getting higher all the time. There was a time when a film like My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) could grow gently by word of mouth to become a colossal hit. Not any longer. The days of the sleeper hit are far behind us. In the modern movie business films have in theory a single weekend to prove themselves at the box office. In practice, sophisticated computer modelling means they have really only a few hours.

In this climate the marketing of the movie is crucial, a new audience has to be bought for every movie and that elusive ‘want see’ commodity has to be created. Hats off then to the marketing department behind this version of A Star is Born. They have created such an enormous amount of hype around this film that I even paid my own money to see it.

To be honest I cannot recall a recent film that has been more overpraised – not even La La Land (2016). Newspaper ads are full of four and – remarkably – even five-star reviews for a film which, to me, is at best workmanlike and at worst unbelievably dull. It’s a bore for the most part.

The appeal of the film to the studio is obvious, A Star is Born has been a hit three times already with Janet Gaynor (1937), Judy Garland (1954), and Barbra Streisand (1976) so in these risk averse times green lighting it seems like a no brainer. And yet this film seems especially  pointless.

The plot is well worn. It’s a story of the love between an established star and a wannabe in which the Svengali-like influence of the superstar will mould and shape the talented ingenue. The twist is that the established star’s career is on a downward trajectory, although he may not know it, and is about to be eclipsed by the rising newcomer. There is, as there has been in all three previous versions, a fateful conclusion and triumphant resolution.

This time round the star is Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper), a country-rock star of inexplicable global popularity and the newcomer is Ally Campana (Lady Gaga), a waitress who wants to be a songwriter but lacks confidence. It’s simple stuff but very heavy going. The first half is light enough despite Gaga, of which more later, but the second half is a bit of a slog as we find ourselves wading through very predictable treacle.

Part of the problem is a very poor script for which Cooper is partially credited along with Will Fetters and Eric Roth. This is a script that leaves nothing to the imagination, it has no sense of subtext. Every point is hammered home and we are left in no doubt about the back story of every character because they cannot be prevented from narrating it at every opportunity. The first clash between Jackson and his older brother Bobby (Sam Elliott) is an especially egregious example of information dumping. There are no characters, just talking plot points.

Cooper is by some distance the best thing in the film. He is an attractive actor in every sense of the world and the film never lets you forget that. Gaga may have top billing but he’s the director, so he gets all the close-ups.

Lady Gaga on the other hand is extremely problematic. As Ally she has no presence at all, she’s no actor. I suspect this might be down to a consistent inability to find her lens, so she doesn’t have the impact she should have. It is nonetheless a passionless performance which only comes to life when she becomes, effectively Lady Gaga. Ally, as she is now singularly named, is Lady Gaga to all intents and purposes and performatively she provides a much-needed shot in the arm. There is however no explanation for how the soulful Suzanne Vega type songwriter turns into this overhyped creature.

Jackson meanwhile is going from bad to worse with a season ticket for the rehab facility. Unlike other versions of the story, the focus here is on the male lead rather than the female. It’s his story not hers and much less interesting for it; so much for #metoo. Whether or not Gaga could have lifted that dramatic weight is mercifully untested.

As a director Cooper deserves some credit for his choice of subject but that’s about it. Unlike other actors making a directing debut he has not chosen to do some vanity indie piece of emo navel-gazing. This is a big film with big budgets and big issues to deal with.

He deals with them competently and in a workmanlike way. The film’s visual trick is to put you on stage with the performers – previous versions gave us largely the audience perspective - but this is just a product of new technology. Cooper, to be fair, does his own singing and playing; it’s pleasant enough but not something you’d pay money to hear.

As a filmmaker there is very little flair or imagination in Cooper’s direction; he does not strike you as a director with something to say or an interesting way of saying it. He does deserve credit for getting through his first picture, but there’s nothing here to suggest that I’d be in any hurry to see his second one.