FILM | Reviews
SATIRE MAPS TO THE STARS (18) 112min ●●●●●
David Cronenberg arrives about 20 years late to the party with Maps to the Stars, a strained satire of Tinseltown that feels surprisingly old hat. Screenwriter Bruce Wagner’s slice of Hollywood gothic takes lazy pot shots at easy targets from Harvey Weinstein to Scientology, never quite escaping the long shadows of more vivid movie-town nightmares like Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard or Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Scarred, mystery girl Agatha (Mia Wasikowska) arrives in Hollywood and is soon the latest in a long line of personal assistants to ageing diva Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore). Agatha has a tragic, tangled history that gives her a connection to the movie capital, while her hideously bratty actor brother Benjie (Evan Bird) is a hot teen idol.
The starry ensemble sink their teeth into a gallery of
extremes, with Olivia Williams tearing into her role of Benjie’s fiercely controlling mother and Moore as fearless as she was in Short Cuts, here playing the YouTube generation’s Norma Desmond. The dialogue bites and scratches, and there is the sting of something like the truth, but as the clunky plot laboriously joins the dots towards a melodramatic finale, it feels desperately obvious and not a little silly. (Allan Hunter) ■ General release from Fri 26 Sep.
COMEDY DRAMA WISH I WAS HERE (15) 107min ●●●●●
Like its struggling protagonist, unemployed actor and father Aidan Bloom, writer-director Zach Braff’s follow-up to Garden State comes with considerable baggage. The easy charm and comedic melancholy of Braff’s 2004 debut created a cult following: his fanbase ponied-up over three million dollars to make this film via Kickstarter. Braff plays Aidan, who’s shuffling between his dying father Gabe (Mandy Patinkin), shiftless brother Noah (Josh Gad) and wife Sarah (Kate Hudson), who is frustrated that his dream of becoming an actor has rendered him incapable of being a breadwinner.
Braff deserves credit for setting Wish I Was Here in a world of school fees, sexual harassment, expensive healthcare and other recognisably real elements, and some pathos is derived from their honest depiction. But his take on deep subjects is painfully shallow, and the resolution trite.
With satire limited to a dig at YouTube videos of kittens, shoehorned-in plugs for Aston Martin and Comic-Con, and poetry readings giving way to mix-tapes of maudlin hipster music, the self-aware humility of Garden State is sadly missing. It aims for originality but much of Braff’s second film plays out as self-pitying Hollywood schmaltz. (Eddie Harrison) ■ Limited release from Fri 19 Sep.
DRAMA THE RIOT CLUB (15) 107min ●●●●●
Adapted by Laura Wade from her own play Posh, The Riot Club violently disabuses anyone of the notion that those who rule us might do so from a good place. Wade and director Lone Scherfig (An Education) knock the über-privileged off their pedestal by turning these puffed-up princes into monsters. But by hammering home the invulnerability and continued dominance of a particular breed of upper-class twit and drawing a thick line between us and them, the filmmakers ensure it’s the proletariat audience who suffer, emerging sick and sullied on the other side.
The Riot Club of the title is a thinly disguised Bullingdon Club (of which David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson were famously members), here an exclusive Oxford University society comprising just ten men, selected for their public-school credentials and potential for hang-it-all hedonism. Into this nest of bully boys steps affable undergrad Miles (Max Irons), who is courted by the club alongside the nasty Alistair (Sam Claflin).
The film builds to the club’s infamous dinner – held in the back room of a nice country
pub – which becomes increasingly, aggressively vile and into which Miles’ girlfriend Lauren (Holliday Grainger) is drawn. The Riot Club wrong-foots us with romance and an irreverent opener before descending into darkness. Claflin stands out as the villainous Alistair, as his personal humiliations accumulate he rises to his full, hideously hateful potential. Scherfig’s eighth feature is an appropriately discomforting, immersive watch, being both
gruelling and galling as it illustrates just how dangerously anti-social these young men are. It might at first seem like a comedy but, with its mounting horrors and nod to those currently in charge, it’s depressingly clear that the joke is on us. (Emma Simmonds) ■ General release from Fri 19 Sep.
THRILLER ’71 (15) 99min ●●●●●
There seems to be no stopping Jack O’Connell right now. His latest turn, in Yann Demange’s debut ’71, reasserts his soon-to-be star status. O’Connell plays Gary Hook, a British soldier fresh out of basic training. On patrol in Belfast at the height of the Troubles, Gary gets caught up in a riot and separated from his fellow soldiers. Lost in the rabbit-warren of Belfast’s side-streets, he desperately tries to find his way back to the barracks. In these scenes, O’Connell is marvellous, so breathless and frightened you can feel virtually every bead of sweat dripping from his brow. Yet, courtesy of Gregory Burke’s lean script, ’71 is more than just a pulsating thriller. Gary gets caught up in a web of relationships and power plays between the IRA, loyalist paramilitaries and the British army (led by a typically robust Sean Harris). If this luckless soldier is a pawn, he’s one who doesn’t even know that he’s in the game. With Blackburn doubling admirably for Belfast, there’s an authenticity here which stretches from
the place to performances and politics. Action mingles with tension, while dialogue is sparse. Demange keeps it all flowing, ensuring you're hooked right to the final frame. (James Mottram) ■ General release from Fri 10 Oct.
60 THE LIST 18 Sep–16 Oct 2014