Clouds of Sils Maria

 Year:  2014

Director:  Olivier Assayas

Screenplay:  Olivier Assayas

Starring:  Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace Moretz, Johnny Flynn

Running Time:  123 minutes

Genre:  Drama

Maria Enders (Binoche) is an acclaimed, successful actress who is cast in a play called Maloja Snake about the relationship between an older and younger woman.  Twenty years previously Maria had starred as the younger woman, the part that made her name, and now she is cast as the older partner, opposite young American starlet Jo-Ann Ellis (Moretz).  In remote Sils Maria, high in the Alps, Maria and her assistant Valentine (Stewart) cloister themselves to rehearse and prepare the character.  As they prepare and delve deeper beneath the skin of the character, Maria, who was reluctant from the beginning to accept the part, becomes increasingly prey to her insecurities and professional jealousy, as the play begins to increasingly mirror her life.

This is a slow, meditative psychological drama.  For the most part, the film is a two hander between Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart as they rehearse and discuss the play, the psychology of Maria's part and the state of cinema, and walk in the spectacular Alpine scenery.  Juliette Binoche is very good in a part that was written specifically for her by writer/director Olivier Assayas, who incorporated elements from Binoche's real life into the script.  Kristen Stewart also gives a very strong performance as the loyal assistant, Valentine.  Despite prominent billing, Chloë Grace Moretz has comparatively little screen time, although she makes the most of it as the young starlet, who is never out of the tabloids or internet gossip sites for her boozing, drugs, fighting paparazzi and police officers, and her older, married boyfriend (Johnny Flynn).  The film is highly allusive, hinting at and referencing things that are never shown or explained, for example Maria often asks Valentine about her relationship with a photographer, but Valentine always evades the questions.  In one scene she returns to the house, apparently deeply upset, having seemingly split up with him, but we never learn what happened.   It is also hinted that Maria and Valentine's relationship may be more than strictly professional, but it is left ambiguous.  This is a film which seems simple on the surface, but is deceptively complex, where a lot is left up to the viewer to interpret in their own way.  Some may find this entrancing, others merely frustrating.  Some of the film is very funny, making fun of contemporary Hollywood cinema.  Maria is embarrassed that her biggest hit was an X-Men film, and she constantly gets offered roles in horror or science-fiction movies (a nun who turns out to be a werewolf and a mutant hybrid), which she is very contemptuous of.  In one of the film's funniest scenes, Maria and Valentine got to see Jo-Ann Ellis' latest movie, a science-fiction film where she is dressed in a red catsuit and matching wig in what looks like a particularly cheesy 1980s episode of Doctor Who.  When Valentine (wearing a Batman tee-shirt) tries to convince Maria that comic book and science-fiction films can be serious and artistic, dealing with complex, serious themes, Maria responds by laughing at her.  The film is beautifully made and stylishly photographed.  The film's title, and the title of the play within the film, refers to a weather phenomenon where the clouds hang low beneath the mountain peaks and move through the valleys giving the appearance of a large snake.

Kristen Stewart and Juliette Binoche in Clouds of Sils Maria

(500) Days of Summer

Year: 2009
Director: Marc Webb
Screenplay: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Chloe Grace Moretz, Geoffey Arend, Michael Gray Gubler, Clark Gregg
Running Time: 95 minutes
Genre: Drama, romance, comedy

Summary: Los Angeles, 2006: Tom Hansen (Gordon-Levitt) is an aspiring architect who works designing greetings cards. One day he meets his boss' new assistant, Summer Finn (Deschanel), and instantly falls for her. Tom, who is a firm believer in true love, believes that he has found the one girl for him, however Summer does not believe in love and is not interested in commitment, seeing Tom as a good friend and nothing more. The two embark on a turbulent relationship through the pleasures and heartbreak of modern relationships.

Opinions: This film is told in a non-linear style, flashing back and forth in time through the five hundred days of Tom and Summer's relationship. It contrasts the fun, joy and exuberance of the early days of the relationship with the misery and heartbreak of the end of the affair. It uses a voice-over narration from actor Richard McGonagle, as well as a variety of visual tricks (including switches from colour to black-and-white, animation, title cards, captions, split screen and an elaborate song and dance number) to get inside the mind of Tom Hansen, through whose eyes the story is told. The non-linear style of the film shows how initially minor glitches in the early days of a romance frequently blossom into major problems, and how what seem at first to be cute quirks in the object of desire can soon turn into big annoyances as the passion sours. The film also shows how the cracks in a relationship can start just as much from small, initially unnoticed things as much as from major blowups. However one defect of the film's fragmented narrative means that the frequent sudden shifts in tone between comedy and drama can be quite jarring.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel both make likeable and engaging leads and are well supported by Chloe Grace Moretz as Tom's wise beyond her years kid sister, and Geoffrey Arend and Matthew Gray Gubler as his supportive friends.
This is a fun, bittersweet, hip, quirky and stylish look at modern relationships and makes for a refreshing antidote to most other romantic films, although it's probably best if you don't put it on for date night. Particularly not if you're the mysterious Jenny Beckman, who is referred to as a "bitch" in the film's opening title cards.



Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in (500) Days of Summer

Kick-Ass

Year: 2010
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Screenplay: Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, based on the comic-book by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr.
Starring: Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Grace Moretz, Nicolas Cage, Mark Strong
Running Time: 117 minutes
Genre: Superhero, action, comedy

Summary: New York City, the present: Dave Lizewski (Johnson) is a teenage comic-book fan, who dreams of becoming a superhero. Despite having no training and no superpowers, he decides to turn his dreams into reality and, with a costume fashioned from a scuba diving suit, he dubs himself "Kick-Ass" and sets out to become a real-life superhero. However, his first attempts just result in him getting badly beaten up. However, one night his successful intervention in an assault is filmed and put on the YouTube site. Dave discovers that Kick-Ass is an internet celebrity. Then he meets fellow costumed hero Big Daddy (Cage) who, with the help of his violent, foul-mouthed eleven year old daughter, Hit Girl (Moretz), is fighting to bring down the city's most powerful organised crime ring.

Opinions: This movie is a lot of fun. It is packed with action and humour, and there are plenty of references to the world of comic-books and superheroes. The film, which is almost a parody of Batman and Spider-Man is very sympathetic with the costumed vigilantes but also features the dark and dangerous side as Kick-Ass very quickly finds himself way over his head. The film's storyline is not particularly unique with the idea of untrained superhero wannabes having been done several times before, but the film is stylish and entertaining enough that this doesn't matter. The film features some great performances in particular from Chloe Moretz turning in a startling performance as the ruthless Hit Girl who manages to be both likeable and terrifying. In the film's lead Johnson delivers a great comic peformance. The film is full of exagerrated comic-book style violence, which won't be to everyone's taste. The film knows it's target audience and fans of comic-book movies and action films are sure t find something to entertain them. As an unashamed comic book fan myself, I loved it.



Aaron Johnson and Chloe Grace Moretz in Kick-Ass

Let Me In

Year: 2010
Director: Matt Reeves
Screenplay: Matt Reeves, based on the novel and screenplay Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Grace Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas, Cara Buono
Running Time: 116 minutes
Genre: Horror, drama

Summary: In March, 1983, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, twelve year old Owen (Smit-McPhee) lives with his religious, alcoholic mother (Buono), who largely ignores him, on a depressing housing estate. He is also frequenty bullied at school. One night he meets a new neighbour, Abby (Moretz), a seemingly ordinary twelve year old girl, who lives with an elderly man (Jenkins) assumed to be her father. A strong friendship soon blossoms between Owen and Abby until he learns that Abby is, in fact, a vampire, and her "father" is behind a brutal series of ritualistic killings in the local area which he has done to provide her with the blood she needs.

Opinions: The 2004 novel Let the Right One In by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist has previously been adapted as a critically acclaimed and successful Swedish film directed by Tomas Alfredson, and now an English-language version has been made. It's hard not to feel cynical when a successful foreign language film is given an English-language remake, especially when it's only been a couple of years since the release of the Swedish film. In fact, Alfredson was, understandably, very angry at the news that his film was being remade on the grounds that he thought a film should only be remade if there was something wrong with the original and he didn't think that there was anything wrong ith his film, and he is perfectly correct that there is nothing wrong with the earlier film.
However, leaving that aside, Let Me In is a very good film in it's own right. For the most part it sticks very closely to the earlier film and fairly faithful to the original novel (both movie versions excise the novel's gruesome zombie sub-plot). The film has a good sense of time and place with striking visuals of the snow-bathed housing estate. Director Reeves, best known for the 2008 monster movie Cloverfield, delivers some striking scenes, in particular a sequence where the camera is in the back seat of a crashing car. He also has some of the more traditional horror movie scares happening in the background of scenes, and although there are computer generated special effects used, they are mostly fairly subtle. The movie's main strengths are in superb performances from Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz in the lead roles who make their characters if anything even more engaging and sympathetic then their Swedish counterparts.
While sticking a little bit too close to the original to really become it's own thing, this is a fine, well-made movie that deserves a wider audience than traditional horror audiences and should appeal to fans of the original as well as newcomers.


Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Grace Moretz in Let Me In