Mama

I knew nothing of this film before entering the cinema except that it starred Jessica Chastain (Yes!) and was directed by Guillermo del Toro (Yes!). One of those facts of course turned out to be false. As is often the case with modern horror this film was not directed by but rather ‘presented by’ del Toro who was in fact the executive producer. Mama is a fairly conventional modern horror film which I admit I’m going to find difficult to review. If you want a review of the film as seen from behind my girlfriend’s shoulder or a review of the sound you can hear when your eyes are closed then you’ve come to the right place. I am a total horror wuss and as usual for a film featuring ghosts, it scared the shit out of me.

Following the 2008 financial crash a businessman murders his partners and wife before abducting his two young children. He crashes his car in a forest and ends up in a creepy cabin from where he is mysteriously taken. Five years later his twin brother (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is still searching for the girls when two men happen upon them in the same cabin they entered five years earlier. The girls now eight and six are half wild, move about on all fours and have an imaginary friend called Mama. They go to live with their uncle and his girlfriend (Jessica Chastain) where things start to go freaky weird.

The Help

It’s rare that I watch a film and want to hurt the cast but I deeply disliked about 60% of the characters in The Help and wanted to punch about 20% of them in the face. The Oscar winning 2011 film tells the story of disenfranchised maids living in early 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone) returns from college with the world at her feet but realises that her family and friends expect very specific things of her. She is to act and dress in a certain way, not think too hard and settle down with a husband as soon as possible. Skeeter goes against what is expected and gets a job at the local paper. Desperate for something worthwhile to write about she asks her friend’s maid Aibileen (Viola Davis) if she can write about life from the help’s perspective. Although weary at first, Aibileen soon opens up to Skeeter and soon fellow maid Minny (Octavia Spencer) is telling her story too.

I never saw The Help on its initial release and is in fact a rare example of a recent Best Picture candidate I’ve missed. Something about the movie didn’t appeal to me and my early hatred of the bad guy characters coupled with finding Emma Stone’s character annoying got me off to a bad start. By the end though I was wishing the film wouldn’t end and would have watched another act. I grew to respect and love certain characters but still want to punch others and the story is a remarkable example of bravery, courage and setting right what is wrong.

Zero Dark Thirty

The follow up to Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar winning The Hurt Locker is Zero Dark Thirty, a film set around the ten year hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Opening with an incredibly visceral, sound only montage of 9/11 telephone recordings in which people are heard calling home and on the phone to the emergency services the film then follows the next ten years in the hunt for 9/11’s orchestrator, Osama Bin Laden. Young CIA Operative Maya (Jessica Chastain) lands in Pakistan to begin work at the US Embassy and various black sites in the area. She witnesses torture first hand and soon picks up a lead which she believes will bring the US to Bin Laden.

The final forty minutes of the movie creates an incredibly realistic reconstruction of the final assault on Bin Laden’s compound and is perhaps the most compelling and seemingly accurate depiction of a black ops mission I’ve ever seen. Tense doesn’t even come close and despite knowledge of how things would pan out I was still glued to the screen with awe but felt repulsed by its realism. The realism actually made me feel uncomfortable and although I think that Zero Dark Thirty is a good film, I didn’t like it.

Lawless

Lawless is a prohibition era gangster biopic about three brothers from Virginia. Jack Bondurant (Shia LaBeouf) is the youngest of the brothers and lacks the courage, strength or attitude to violence that his older brothers Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Howard (Jason Clark) possess. Forrest especially is a sort of Clint Eastwood figure; strong, silent and deadly. All three are involved in the moonshine business but their trade comes under threat when a new Special Deputy (Guy Pearce) arrives from Chicago to put a halt to their operations.

The film shares traits with Director John Hillcoat’s previous film The Proposition. Both focus on brothers outside the law in semi-desolate locations who must battle across a thin line between right and wrong against corrupt officials. The visually stunning but run down locations and decaying beauty also help bring to mind Hillcoat’s The Road. This film though is more of a coming of age story as young Jack Bondurant fights for respect from his brothers and the gangster who inhabit his world. It is also a tale that blurs the lines between good and evil, right and wrong with the Bondurant boys becoming anti heroes who the audience will be routing for from start to finish.