New-ish at the Movies: Pain & Gain, Only God Forgives, The Wolverine, The Way Way Back, The Conjuring & Byzantium

Still hov­er­ing around some local cin­e­mas — and the longest-delayed of all my out­stand­ing reviews — Still Mine is a sur­pris­ing­ly effec­tive Cana­di­an dra­ma about an elder­ly man (James Cromwell, 73 but play­ing a fit 89) deter­mined to build a new house for his wife (Geneviéve Bujold) before her mem­o­ry deserts her com­plete­ly. Cromwell gives his char­ac­ter a soft­ness which belies the usu­al ornery old dude clichés, even if his stub­born refusal to sub­mit to the build­ing code is the device on which the sto­ry hinges. Con­tains lots of shots of Cromwell’s hero­ic pro­file star­ing off into the New Brunswick dis­tance.

Old­er peo­ple are, para­dox­i­cal­ly, the only grow­ing seg­ment of the film audi­ence in New Zealand so there’s often high qual­i­ty fare around the tempt them. One of the best is the doc­u­men­tary Ping Pong, about com­peti­tors (gen­uine com­peti­tors at that) in the World Over 80s Table Ten­nis Cham­pi­onship in Inner Mon­go­lia. Like any good doc­u­men­tary it assem­bles a great cast of char­ac­ters and like all good sports movies it makes full use of the built-in dra­ma of a knock-out tour­na­ment. Not just about the restora­tive pow­er of exer­cise, it’s also about friend­ship and adven­ture. Inspir­ing, so help me.

Exer­cise is not always good for you, though, as the pro­tag­o­nists of Michael Bay’s under-rat­ed satire Pain & Gain might con­firm. Based on the true sto­ry of a gang of 1980s Mia­mi body­builders who short­cut their way to the Amer­i­can Dream by kid­nap­ping a local busi­ness­man and forc­ing him to sign over all his assets. Mark Wahlberg is the brains of the out­fit — if that’s not an entire­ly incor­rect char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the sit­u­a­tion — and Dwayne John­son and Antho­ny Mack­ie get dragged along with it. John­son in par­tic­u­lar has a ball play­ing a born-again, sober, ex-con con­fronting his demons in hilar­i­ous fash­ion.

It’s not with­out some ter­ri­ble mis­steps but the script by Christo­pher Markus and Stephen McFeely is so good I’m tempt­ed to pin the blame for every­thing that does­n’t work square­ly on Mr. Bay. Deli­cious­ly mis­an­throp­ic in ways that nor­mal­ly turn me right off, Pain & Gain is my guilti­est plea­sure of the year so far.

Com­pared with P&G, Nicholas Wind­ing Refn’s Only God For­gives is a work of total zen (although  fired by an equal repug­nance for human beings no mat­ter what path they are walk­ing). In present-day Thai­land, Ryan Gosling’s tac­i­turn drug smug­gler is forced by his Lady Mac­Beth-like moth­er (Kristin Scott Thomas) to avenge the death of his old­er broth­er, him­self a nasty piece of work. In turn, his reluc­tant car­nage leaves a trail fol­lowed by a local cop (Vitaya Pan­sringarm) who has his own way of clean­ing the streets.

A severe dis­til­la­tion of both revenge tragedy and Gosling’s recent inar­tic­u­late — vague­ly autis­tic — anti-heroes, Only God For­gives may be the most beau­ti­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tion of human hor­ror I’ve ever seen. It makes no attempt to pro­vide char­ac­ters with more than the most base motives for pri­mal actions — psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly void, not just sim­plis­tic. It has stuck with me, this one, and — despite my usu­al squea­mish­ness in these mat­ters — I can see a need for a sec­ond view­ing.

Bare­ly jus­ti­fy­ing a first view­ing, Hugh Jack­man’s sixth (so far) out­ing as the moody mutant Logan, The Wolver­ine can’t even bring itself to find an orig­i­nal title — you might recall the last one was called X‑Men Ori­gins: Wolver­ine. Like Gosling in Only God For­gives, he is a white dude get­ting up to mis­chief in some kind of Asian fan­ta­sy land, in this case a Japan con­struct­ed from ref­er­ences in that chil­dren’s ver­sion of Wikipedia.

Some­how, I man­aged to fall asleep dur­ing the loud­est sec­tion of the film — an extend­ed dig­i­tal­ly-con­struct­ed bat­tle between Logan and some nin­jas on the top of the famous bul­let train — and the rest of the very stu­pid film could bare­ly main­tain what lit­tle atten­tion I had left. It does make a nice change though for a block­buster movie to not be about sav­ing us from the end of the world, though, just anoth­er exis­ten­tial cri­sis for the biggest wuss in the Mar­vel or DC uni­vers­es.

If the world was­n’t already full of com­ing-of-age movies in which a sen­si­tive, lone­ly, mis­un­der­stood and unap­pre­ci­at­ed ado­les­cent male learns some impor­tant life lessons — and kiss­es a girl — with the help of an unlike­ly best friend, I might feel a lit­tle more fond­ly of The Way, Way Back. The pres­ence of both Toni Col­lette and Steve Carell also remind­ed me too much of the irre­deemably smarmy Lit­tle Miss Sun­shine (which is not its fault, to be sure) so, by the time Alli­son Jan­ney and Sam Rock­well arrived — both seem­ing­ly unre­strained by direc­to­r­i­al influ­ence — I was already check­ing out.

It’s all endear­ing enough, I sup­pose, and it’s nice to see Carell, at least, play­ing against type, but I’d much rather see the next one of these films told from the female point of view rather than reduc­ing them to glib types, defined only by their rela­tion­ship with the oh-so-impor­tant pro­tag­o­nist.

The July earth­quake took place dur­ing my Sun­day after­noon screen­ing of the hor­ror flick The Con­jur­ing at Read­ings — the only time it is accept­able to text in a movie the­atre by the way — so I can’t be sure if the accel­er­at­ed heart rate and shal­low­er breath­ing was due to the tremors or a bet­ter-than-usu­al fright-deliv­ery mech­a­nism direct­ed by James Wan (Saw). Patrick Wil­son and Vera Farmi­ga are para­nor­mal inves­ti­ga­tors called to a haunt­ed house that Ron Liv­ingston and Lili Tay­lor (and their five daugh­ters) have just moved in to.

These things are all about exe­cu­tion and Wan has that in spades — in ways that the tedious Para­nor­mal Activ­i­ty fran­chise can only dream of — plus he casts real­ly well. Prop­er actors, every­where. I’m extreme­ly hap­py that he is mak­ing Fast & Furi­ous 7.

Quick­ly wrap­ping up this col­umn — and edg­ing us clos­er to being ful­ly caught up — two more con­trast­ing genre pieces. Neil Jor­dan is one of the most expe­ri­enced direc­tors around — I remem­ber watch­ing and admir­ing his debut, Angel, back when I was at high school in 1982. His vam­pire movie, Byzan­tium, is a low-bud­get char­ac­ter-dri­ven piece cen­tred on the rela­tion­ship between two sis­ters (Gem­ma Arter­ton and Saoirse Ronan) on the run in a past-its-best British sea­side town. It turns out that not only are they not sis­ters but that they have been here before, many years ago. At the risk of being black­balled from the film review­er’s union I might sug­gest that these two parts give the leads plen­ty to sink their teeth into — oppor­tu­ni­ties that Arter­ton in par­tic­u­lar takes full advan­tage of.

Eron Sheean is at the oth­er end of his career and his first fea­ture, Errors of the Human Body, suf­fers from that lack of expe­ri­ence. A Cro­nen­ber­gian body hor­ror about ran­dom genet­ic muta­tions, retro­virus­es, com­pet­i­tive sci­en­tif­ic research and mice, Errors does­n’t suc­ceed in get­ting its point across. This — rea­son­ably bright — review­er found the sci­ence too obtuse and the con­clu­sion too unsat­is­fy­ing to make up for the lack of propul­sion in the first two thirds.

[First post­ed to Funer­als & Snakes on Sep­tem­ber 3, 2013.]