Posts Tagged ‘Shailene Woodley’

Ferrari

Director: Michael Mann

Cast: Adam Driver, Penelope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Gadon, Patrick Dempsey, Jack O’Connell, Agnese Brighitini, Leonardo Caimi, Gabriel Leone

Running Time: 2 hours and 10 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Film Editor Pietro Scalia deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Editing for director Michael Mann’s latest biopic about the founder of luxury car brand Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari superbly played with complete brutal dexterity by Oscar nominee Adam Driver (Marriage Story, BlackKklansman) who deserves to be nominated for Best Actor for Ferrari.

Counterbalancing Enzo Ferrari’s sleek business operation of manufacturing sports cars and racing cars is Enzo’s wife Laura Ferrari expertly played with the right degree of bitterness and scorn by Oscar winner Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona). The scenes between Enzo and Laura are electrifying and required two really talented actors to make this complex marriage which was more like a business arrangement believable and toxic.

Enzo Ferrari has a mistress and a child from another woman, Lina Landi played by Shailene Woodley (The Descendants), whose insistence that Enzo recognizes the paternity of the little boy is just one of the problems that skilled tough business man Enzo has to figure out as he needs his international drivers to win the formidable and highly dangerous Italian race Mille Miglia which occurred with relentless loss of life.

American director Michael Mann kept a low profile in the 2010’s after huge critically acclaimed successes with Collateral, Public Enemies and Miami Vice. So its great news that Michael Mann has returned to the director’s chair with Ferrari a stylish, brutal and atmospheric film about the founder of Ferrari capturing in minute detail the Italian society of 1957 filled with machismo, racing drivers that would die like flies and most of all the glamour that Italian car brands like Ferrari and Maserati brought back to Italy after the gloom of the post War years of the late 1940’s which gave birth to the film movement Italian Neo-realism.

In actual fact Michael Mann incorporates some of those Neo-realist film techniques into Ferrari particularly Enzo’s scenes with the fickle but pushy Italian press and those scenes in the Barber shop and on the Italian street.

Ferrari’s international cast includes Patrick Dempsey as racing car driver Piero Taruffi, British actor Jack O’Connell as racing car driver Peter Collins along with Italian stars Gabriel Leone as Alfonso de Portago and Leonardo Caimi as Brusoni.

The emotional crux of Ferrari is the difficult and complex relationship between Enzo and his volatile wife Laura, beautifully played out on screen by Driver and Cruz. Laura held all the financial power for Ferrari while Enzo dreamed big but needed to take the luxury car manufacturing company to a new international market with an urgent cash injection.

From the devastating car crashes to the glamour around fast cars and luxury, Ferrari is a fascinating and authentic tale of an ambitious, hardnosed businessman that would not be known outside the Italian world.

Enzo Ferrari created those red sleek sports cars which are now synonymous with speed, luxury and affluence. As a film, Ferrari plays on that primal fascination that men have with competitive driving often at the cost of looking after their own families, a deadly passion which has to be sought to protect their egos, reputation and virility.

Ferrari is a highly recommended biopic, beautifully directed by Michael Mann and expertly acted by the two main leads with sumptuous cinematography and cutting edge editing.

Michael Mann returns to form in Ferrari which gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is definitely worth seeing for those that enjoyed such excellent films as Ford v Ferrari and All the Money in the World.

Read more about Enzo Ferrari here – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzo_Ferrari

To Catch a Killer

Director: Damian Szifron

Cast: Shailene Woodley , Ben Mendelsohn, Ralph Ineson, Jovan Adepo, Jason Cavalier, Rosemary Dunsmore, Mark Camacho

Running Time: 1 hour and 59 minutes

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

PLEASE NOTE THIS FILM MIGHT ALSO BE KNOWN AS MISANTHROPE

IN OTHER WORLD TERRITORIES.

Argentinian Oscar winning director of Wild Tales, Damian Szifron directs his first English Language film: a murky and bloody detective story, To Catch a Killer starring Golden Globe nominee Shailene Woodley (The Descendants, Big Little Lies) as a rookie cop Eleanor Falco in Baltimore, Maryland who teams up with veteran FBI investigator Lamar, brilliantly played with a maverick style flair by Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn (Animal Kingdom, The Dark Knight Rises).

The pair team up with an arsonist investigator Mackenzie played by Babylon star Jovan Adepo when a lone marksman shoots 29 people dead in various Baltimore skyscrapers on New Year’s Eve.

The Trio upon increasing pressure from the FBI and city authorities are racing against time to find the perpetrator before another massacre occurs. That happens very soon in a city shopping mall, whereby the suspected killer is cornered in a food court and resorts to extreme violence to escape.

To Catch a Killer is a relevant film to watch at the time when America is experiencing its worse wave of gun violence in US history, with mass killings happening on a weekly basis in almost every state of the country. This film asks relevant questions. Why should individuals with severe mental illness or disabilities be allowed to carry heavy guns and deadly rifles? Why aren’t the laws in America strict enough? It’s a complex issue for a country of that size whereby the gun laws differ from state to state.

As a film, Szifron keeps the cinematic palette dark and saturated with murky colours adding a sombre ambience to a film about death and mass killings. Fortunately both Shailene Woodley and Ben Mendelsohn are talented actors to keep this distressing detective film engaging and thrilling. The best scenes in the film are between the two main leads.

Woodley is superb as the recovering drug addict turned investigator and Mendelsohn is excellent as the flamboyant lead detective on a prolific case which ultimately consumes his personal and professional life.

To Catch a Killer has enough plot twists to keep audiences guessing and when the killer is finally revealed, his blandness and ordinary status as an ex-abattoir worker makes his final confession even more chilling and psychopathic. In this case, the banality of evil is done for its own sake without any moral justification or redemption.

This film highlights the epidemic of gun violence currently sweeping America, the role that the media plays in this and the devastating personal cost which happens to the victims who are senselessly murdered and to the survivors that are traumatically left behind.

As Lamar says to Eleanor at the film’s beginning, “Opinions never caught anyone, but good detective works does”.

To Catch a Killer is an exciting but bleak look at gun violence, microscopic detective work and the toll that mass killings takes on a society. The film gets a rating of 7 out of 10 and will appeal to audiences that enjoy a gritty American detective story.

The Mauritanian

Director: Kevin Macdonald

Cast: Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster, Shailene Woodley, Denis Menochet, Benedict Cumberbatch, Clayton Boyd, Langley Kirkwood

The Last King of Scotland director Kevin Macdonald tackles a divisive subject in his latest film, The Mauritanian, which focuses on the mistreatment of inmates at the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba run by the Americans post 9/11 for the rendition, capture and torture of suspected terrorists linked to the Twin Towers attack in New York in September 2001. 

The Mauritanian was shot in the Western Cape, South Africa in 2019 and features an international cast including French actor Tahar Rahim as the unfortunate prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Rahim’s performance is superb, displaying a levity which conceals the horrific torture that Slahi endured included waterboarding and psychological torture.

To add some significance to the cast, is another brilliant performance by two time Oscar winner Jodie Foster (The Accused, The Silence of the Lambs) as the hard-edged defence attorney Nancy Hollander who is joined by her young assistant Teri Duncan played by Shailene Woodley (The Descendants, The Fault in my Stars) to build a case for Slahi’s release.

Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game) plays American military prosecutor Stuart Couch who is meant to convict Mohemedou Ould Slahi of colluding with the 9/11 terrorists in Germany back when he was living there. Couch’s prosecution rests on the assumption that Slahi is definitely guilty until all the redacted files on his capture and initial confession are released as privileged information for both sides of the law.

Told in a series of flashbacks to Slahi’s childhood in Mauritania which is a North West African country located at the edge of the Sahara Desert, The Mauritanian is a fascinating true story of one man’s wrongful detention and the years it took through justifiable legal processes to release him from Guantanamo Bay.

As a film based on a real life event, director Kevin Macdonald tends to over-emphasize the torture scenes, which are numerous and disturbing and under-emphasizes the American political climate in which the legal case was being conducted in.

Audiences must remember that The Mauritanian is a British film, which justifies the inexplicable casting of Benedict Cumberbatch as a quintessential American complete with a Southern accent. What holds this film together are the two diametrically opposed performances of Jodie Foster as defence lawyer Nancy Hollander and the outstanding Tahar Rahim as the client, Mohemedou Ould Slahi, a foreigner trapped in a strange prison which is above the law, basically a victim surrounded by wolves.

The script for The Mauritanian was not brilliant and the film could have been edited extensively, which explains the reason this BBC film missed the cut at the 2021 Oscar nominations.

The Mauritanian gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is worth watching but comes with a warning of some disturbing torture scenes.

White Bird in a Blizzard

Director: Gregg Araki

Cast: Shailene Woodley, Eva Green, Shiloh Fernandez, Thomas Jane, Angela Bassett, Christopher Meloni, Gabourey Sidibe, Dale Dickey

The Descendants star Shailene Woodley gives an impressive performance as a sexually charged teenage girl, Kat Connors who discovers her blossoming confidence just as her gorgeous yet unstable mother, Eve, wonderfully played by French actress Eva Green, (The Dreamers, Casino Royale) mysteriously disappears.

Mysterious Skin director Gregg Araki’s startling yet uber cool Eighties drama White Bird in a Blizzard is a bit like Whatever happened to Baby Jane? with a massive twist at the end. So audiences should expect the unexpected.

Assembling a rock star cast including Christopher Meloni as the clueless father, the sumptuous Shiloh Fernandez (Red Riding Hood) as the sexy boy next door, Phil, Gabourey Sidibe star of Precious as Kat Conner’s best friend Beth along with Angela Bassett and Thomas Jane as the grizzled yet carefree police detective. Watch out for a cameo by Sheryl Lee star of the hit TV series Twin Peaks.

White Bird in a Blizzard as seen at the 36^th Durban International Film Festival DIFF subverts everything seemingly domestic about the average American life and turns a seemingly mysterious occurrence in suburban California into something far more sinister and ripe with Freudian references.

On every level, this is a bizarre yet highly amusing film, superbly cast with excellent performances by Woodley and Green as they embark on a tortuous mother-daughter relationship which ignores what is primarily occurring under their noses, undermining their own vanities and exploring hidden agendas from all involved. Eva Green is fabulous as the hip mother who receives little attention from her absent-minded husband while envying the sexual exploits of her beautiful teenage daughter, brilliantly played by Shailene Woodley, who proves she is an actress to watch.

Woodley’s distinct ability to hold her own throughout such a bizarre film is testament to her ever expanding talent which is sure to flourish in years to come. Araki’s frames each shot in the film with an ironic pathos assisted by a nostalgic and cool Eighties soundtrack which includes Depeche Mode.

Everything about White Bird in a Blizzard is wrong in a seriously dysfunctional way. This is a highly entertaining family drama about one young girls’ slow realization that those people surrounding her are certainly not what they claim to be.

Araki’s film is perverse, fabulous and definitely recommended viewing for those audiences which like their narratives as twisted as the intricacies of the most complex of human relationships.

White Bird in a Blizzard is like a Patricia Highsmith novel on acid with a retro Eighties soundtrack.