Film Review of the Week


Drama

The Brutalist (18)




Review: Taking its title from a post-war architecture movement that made extensive use of concrete, director and co-writer Brady Corbet’s dramatic distortion of the American Dream is a monumental technical achievement. ours of painstaking design, ingenuity and effort have been lavished on The Brutalist, recreating 1940s Philadelphia on location in Hungary with a relatively modest 10 million US dollars (£8.2 million) budget. The bravura work of cinematographer Lol Crawley honours the lines and geometry of the architecture, capturing scenes from disorienting angles like an off-kilter Statue of Liberty welcoming refugees to New York.

Corbet is likely win Best Director at this year’s Academy Awards and some of his behind-the-camera collaborators may also be honoured for their gargantuan efforts. However, it is possible to admire the meticulous construction but have limited emotional engagement with the finished product. That is the fate that befalls The Brutalist for me. “It is the destination, not the journey,” reflects one character. On that basis, the final destination of Corbet’s vision leaves me with awestruck reverence for the bold, ballsy ambition and detachment from the characters and their predominantly grim fates. Bookended by an overture and epilogue spanning 1947 to 1980, The Brutalist is divided into two chapters with a 15-minute intermission, replete with onscreen countdown to ensure audience members desperate for the washroom or concessions do not dilly dally.

Hungarian-Jewish architect Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody) is separated from his wife Erzsebet (Felicity Jones) and orphaned niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy) as he flees the Nazi extermination. He arrives in 1947 Manhattan then travels south-west to stay with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who owns a furniture store in Philadelphia with wife Audrey (Emma Laird) that would benefit from Laszlo’s design aesthetic. Privileged scion Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn) hires Attila and Laszlo to renovate the library of his family estate as a surprise birthday present for his industrialist father, Harrison (Guy Pearce). The commission ends in acrimony.

Single father Gordon (Isaach de Bankole), Laszlo’s only friend, rescues him from a drug-fuelled abyss and the men exist hand-to-mouth in a shelter for the unhoused until fate smiles fleetingly on the architect. He is warmly embraced by Harrison to oversee the construction of a community centre in memory of his late mother. The businessman promises to leverage powerful contacts to expedite immigration papers for Erzsebet and Zsofia. However, heir apparent Harry is openly disdainful of the Toths invasion: “We tolerate you.”

Co-written by Corbet and Mona Fastvold, The Brutalist is a sprawling meditation on the immigrant experience, corruptive power, trauma and the durability of the human spirit. Brody’s tireless lead performance as a visionary at the mercy of his ego is the filler when cracks appear in the storytelling. Composer Daniel Blumberg’s intentionally discordant soundtrack repeatedly hints at these fissures behind striking yet austere facades.



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Thriller

Flight Risk (15)




Review: Statistically, planes are one of the safest forms of transportation. That’s certainly not the case in the propulsive action thriller Flight Risk, which welcomes back Mel Gibson to the director’s chair for the first time in almost a decade. Predominantly set inside the claustrophobic interior of a Cessna Grand Caravan cruising at 3,000 feet, this high-stakes game of airborne cat and mice invites Mark Wahlberg to gleefully take the hinges off his heroic screen persona and embrace the extravagant flourishes of a psychopath who delights in tearing victims limb from limb and gouging out their eyeballs. “I’m going to enjoy this!” he snarls directly into camera, getting his blood pumping for the next round of wanton carnage.

Audiences can set their brains to autopilot for extended periods of Gibson’s picture, which lingers on props that play a pivotal role in the battle for survival, telegraphing twists and turns in Jared Rosenberg’s script. Turbulence promised by Wahlberg’s villain manifests largely in real-time and a flirtation between Michelle Dockery’s embattled heroine and a pilot (voiced by Maaz Ali) on the ground provides welcome comic relief in addition to a droll stream of consciousness that pours from Topher Grace’s loose-lipped government witness. We can relate to the mob wanting to permanently silence his chatterbox.

The introduction of digitally rendered Alaskan wildlife for a mild jump scare is shocking for its lack of realism and the joins between practical and computer-generated effects in a climactic stunt sequence are jarringly visible too. Thankfully, Gibson focuses on three solid central performances and bruising mid-air fisticuffs.

US Marshal Madolyn Harris (Dockery) tracks down mob boss Moretti’s fugitive accountant Winston (Grace) to the Igloo Motel in Alaska and places him in protective custody in exchange for explosive testimony against his former employer. She charters a plane to Anchorage to personally escort Winston to an impending trial in New York. Her shackled prisoner is unimpressed by his private transport. “This is a kite with seatbelts,” he scoffs.

The flight over treacherous, snow-capped wilderness should take “90 minutes or so”, according to friendly pilot Daryl Booth (Wahlberg). Once the trio are airborne, Winston notices the photograph on Booth’s pilot’s licence doesn’t match the man sitting behind the controls. It transpires that this Daryl is a sadistic hit man hired by the mob to take exquisite pleasure in torturing the snitch until he is incapable of testifying in court.

Flight Risk is a lean, muscular three-hander bolted together with explosions of wince-inducing violence that raise the stakes sufficiently for us to be invested in characters’ fates. Dockery, Grace and Wahlberg comfortably inhabit their archetypes, the latter relishing a fake accent that he drizzles like honey over playful taunts such as, “Quite the pickle, ain’t it?” A pleasantly brisk flying time of just over 90 minutes is extremely welcome.



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Thriller

Presence (15)




Review: Many ghosts linger in Steven Soderbergh’s confidently executed haunted house thriller, scripted by David Koepp, who adapted Jurassic Park for the screen more than 30 years ago. Not just the titular phantom, which roams silently around a three-bedroom suburban home and bears witness to a dysfunctional family coming apart at the seams, but also the ghosts of the people that these four residents once were or hoped to be.

Not the fragile, broken, despairing souls living side by side in enmity or silence, who justify ethically questionable actions by whispering, “It’s okay to go too far for the people you love.” But contented people, driven by burning passions and fuelled by hope, who instinctively make time for each other and love fiercely and unconditionally.

Shot from the perspective of the unnamed spirit, Presence is an exercise in virtuoso direction built around a solid premise and sinewy storytelling. Four central characters – domineering mother, peacemaker father, favourite son, grieving daughter – are sketched in broad strokes and placed firmly into two camps based on their moral compasses: emotionally sensitive saints or self-interested, sharp-tongued sinners. Koepp’s script attempts to smudge battle lines in a frenetic final act that feels rushed after the satisfying slow burn of an eerie opening hour by introducing a spiritualist (Natalie Woolams-Torres) who stares directly into the camera to indicate that she senses the manifestation.

The ghost is silently in situ when real estate agent Cece (Julia Fox) shows Rebekah Payne (Lucy Liu), husband Chris (Chris Sullivan) and their children Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang) around the property, which has just come on the market. Rebekah is viewing the vacant home because it’s in the correct district for her golden boy to attend the best school in the area, and she casually ignores the rest of the family to prioritise her son and potentially self-destruct her strained marriage. Chris bites his tongue until he can bear it no longer while Chloe tearfully deals with the recent death of her best friend from a drug overdose. As the Paynes unravel, Tyler invites new school friend Ryan (West Mulholland) into the home…

Presence breathes fresh air into a hoary genre with its stylistic first-person perspective, making occasional forays into the realms of the Paranormal Activity films as the spirit makes itself known. Capturing each scene as a single, unbroken handheld shot is neat but does necessitate some inelegant choreography such as characters standing in doorways for longer than seems natural so the camera has time to reach them before they move. Liu’s acid-tongued matriarch sends more of a chill down the spine than anything phantasmagorical. The greatest dangers inside any home are made of flesh and blood.



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