Film Review: A Star is Born (2018)

Bradley Cooper stars in and directs this tale of successful-musician-meets-and-falls-in-love-with-aspiring-but-struggling-musician, with the latter played by Lady Gaga. It's the 4th remake since the release of the original film in 1937.

I went into this a little concerned, something that felt even more justified once I realised that Cooper's character was following the usual rugged, talented man struggles with alcoholism trope that is so common in these types of films. However, the film won me round pretty quickly and although it definitely has some well-worn themes and cliched ideas, it covers them with undeniable heart, and has something original to say on most of them.

Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper), is a character we've seen many times before. However it's the way in which other characters in the film deal with him, and how the film sees him, that makes A Star is Born stand out from other films of a similar nature. There's an empathy to the film-making that sees his alcoholism and self-destructive nature not as that of someone who is spoilt, but as something deeper than that, something far less selfish. I found this particularly refreshing.

Lady Gaga gives a brilliant performance as Ally which never stopped surprising me. She conveys confidence as something less concrete than is often portrayed. In some scenes she seems like a force of nature, in others she's timid. But above all she feels real. I think it's worth seeing the film just for her performance honestly.

Overall, A Star is Born is a surprisingly fresh take on a tired formula, which updates it's themes on age-old problems with modern attitudes, and throws in a bunch of good songs and some of the most immersive concert footage I've seen on film for good measure.

7.5

Film Review: Thoroughbreds (2018)

Written and directed by Corey Finley, Thoroughbreds is a thriller with a dark-comedic tone. The story centers on two friends who've grown apart but are meeting up for the first time in a long time. Lily (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) is seemingly academic and lives in a mansion with her step-father and mother. Visitor Amanda (played by Olivia Cooke) is currently facing charges of animal cruelty having taken it upon herself to euthanise her injured horse. She's cold and seems to have no feelings, all of which allows her to be unnaturally pragmatic. In an unlikely turn of events they rekindle their friendship and hatch a rather violent plan.

Much like Amanda, the film is devoid of emotion and feels rather flat, something I'm sure is intentional. There are some darkly funny moments and the story keeps you guessing to some extent but it wasn't really thrilling enough as a thriller, or amusing enough as a dark comedy.

The cinematography is perhaps the film's strong point, it gives the film a tension when there was little to be tense about beyond the uncomfortably large size of the house they were inhabiting. The lack of much music only adds to this tension.

There's no doubt the film is well packaged: the acting is good, it looks good and it's reasonably well paced. But while I enjoyed the film on the surface for those things, I struggled to find much underneath to really keep me engaged. For me it's a classic case of style over substance.

6

Film Review: Unsane (2018)

Steven Soderbergh is back with psychological thriller Unsane, which he shot, edited and directed. The film stars Claire Foy as protagonist Sawyer who has just moved to a new city to avoid a stalker when she gets admitted to a mental hospital against her will following what seems to be a fairly routine counseling appointment. As things go on we as the audience question, as Sawyer does herself, whether she is indeed insane, or whether this is all a big mix-up.

I thought the first half of the film was brilliant, having worked in a mental hospital myself I've always found it fascinating how once you're in there the most normal things are often seen as a sign of mental illness, and while to me it seems normal to resort to screaming and aggressive behaviour when kept in such a contained environment for extended periods of time, this was often taken as a sign that they should be there. Early on the film tackles this issue and seems to be a statement about mental hospitals admitting people purely to get an insurance payout (something a US chain is being investigated for right now). Sawyer seems sound of mind when she is admitted, but as time goes on struggles more and more with the reality of her situation, leading to violent acts and behaviour that you would never have expected from her outside.

Just when I thought the film was really going to have something interesting to say on these topics, it changed into something else. Something which I thought was less compelling and a little farfetched, although still fairly well executed. I won't spoil it here, but let's just say it turns into something more conventional.

The film is well shot, there's a real sense of claustrophobia in the mental hospital and a lot of the tension in the film is brilliantly created through this, something that is well complemented by an unsettling soundtrack and a superb performance from Foy. One scene in particular conveys a certain feeling brilliantly using some psychedelic filters. The fact it's shot on an iPhone is impressive but doesn't seem to add anything to the film, and it's not as if Soderbergh needed to do it for budgetary reasons (unlike fellow iPhone film Tangerine) so it's slightly odd that he chose to do it here. I suppose you could say it gives the film a more hyper-real feel, but I feel like too big a deal has been made out of it. It feels like a gimmick more than anything.

Overall, it hits the target when it comes to being unsettling and gripping but misses it in terms of saying anything particularly interesting, despite some early promise.

6.5

Film Review: Summer 1993 (2018)

In this stunning Spanish-language drama, director Carla Simón tells the autobiographical story of a young girl who has lost both parents to HIV. The film starts with Frida (the fictionalised version of our director) watching on as her home in Barcelona gets emptied before she is taken to live with her aunt, uncle and cousin out in the countryside.

The film largely revolves around Frida and her younger cousin Anna (now more of a sister) played by Laia Artiges and Paula Robles respectively. Both children give performances beyond their years, performances so good they feel completely real. I know I raved on about the child acting in The Florida Project as being some of the best I've ever seen, the acting of our two leads in this film is just as good, and arguably, in Artiges' case, more complex. The camera spends a lot of time right in our protagonist's face and the way Artiges conveys the emotions bubbling beneath the surface, emotions her character Frida doesn't fully understand, is both masterful and heartbreaking. It's the kind of performance that could only have been brought about by a director who has experienced loss like this first hand.

The film is shot in a very tactile way, the camera actively moving about in a way not dissimilar to handy-cam footage at times, and even during the stiller moments there is notable movement, which again aids the film's very natural feel. The beautiful look of the film is helped by the fact it's set in the stunning Catalan countryside in a rather charming and picturesque house.

Summer 1993 is an incredibly nuanced film, the important plot points aren't necessarily large dramatic events, but small ones where you catch a glimpse of what a certain character is feeling beneath the brave face they are putting on the whole situation. The drama is subtle and never overplayed and the notable use of exclusively diagetic music helps create a hyper-realistic feel.

Plot-wise not all that much happens in Summer 1993, but that's not the point. The point isn't to show a resolution to the problem in some handy little steps, the world doesn't work like that, sometimes there are no solutions. The film just shows the effect such a trauma can have on a child and her extended family, something conveyed perfectly in this Spanish masterpiece.

9.5