Now that his name has become synonymous with explosive, message-driven action movies like Blood Diamond and Defiance, perhaps we can understand Edward Zwick's desire to try his hand at a few new genres, but did he really need to try them all in one movie? Love and Other Drugs never decides what kind of film it wants to be, and its indecision is crippling. The film wants to be a romantic comedy, as it charts the romance between arrogant Pfizer salesman Jamie (Jake Gyllenhaal) and free-spirited artist Maggie (Anne Hathaway), but it also wants to be a raunchy farce in which Jamie's obnoxious brother (Josh Gad, an insufferable vortex of anti-comedy) is caught masturbating to his sibling's sex tape. There's no reason why such disparate elements shouldn't mesh, of course, but here they blend like oil and water, and matters are further complicated by the film's attempt to capture the essence of America's mid-90's economic boom, or the dark cloud of Maggie's worsening Parkinson's disease. Love and Other Drugs will do anything to get a laugh or jerk a tear, and its desperation is embarrassing.
The strain also shows in Gyllenhaal's performance, as he attempts to bring a laid-back charm and charisma to his cocksure character that seems to be beyond his abilities. Jamie is going nowhere until he finds his calling as a pharmaceutical salesman working for Pfizer, with his smooth talk allowing him to seduce his way past receptionists and into doctor's surgeries, where he sneakily deposits his own drug while swiping the opposition's. Such unscrupulous behaviour makes Jamie a perfect match for Dr. Stan Knight (Hank Azaria), who even allows him to be in the room while he examines Maggie's breast. Maggie, instead of complaining to the authorities and getting the doctor struck off for his behaviour, also eventually proves immune to Jamie's charms, and the pair are quickly enjoying a no-strings-attached relationship.
Inevitably, that 'just sex' affair starts to develop into something more, even as Maggie attempts to resist any deeper connection. She knows her condition is only going to worsen over time, and this knowledge has led to her cutting emotional ties, fearing a future in which she will be a liability for her partner or will inspire only his sympathy ("You are not a good person because you pity-fuck the sick girl" she shouts in one of the film's few effectively acerbic moments). This is interesting territory for a mainstream Hollywood romance to explore – how do you overcome such obstacles to forge a successful relationship? – and Hathaway strikes the right note in her portrayal of Maggie, refusing to overdo the tics associated with her illness or play the victim. Love and Other Drugs only explores these issues in the most superficial way, though, and while we might applaud the film for giving screen time to real Parkinson's sufferers and allowing them to tell their story, the effect of such moments is undermined by the countless misjudged sequences, some of which seem to exist in a different film altogether. In one such scene, Viagra salesman Jamie is forced to run from a party holding a pillow over his uncontrollable erection. It's an utterly juvenile sequence in a film that seems desperate to be viewed as adult and sophisticated, and indicative of the picture's identity crisis.
Perhaps we should end with a word on the nudity in Love and Other Drugs. Yes, Gyllenhaal and Hathaway are naked for many of their scenes together, and Zwick clearly wants to present this as a casual, relaxed approach to nudity and sexuality, but it doesn't seem so casual when the film's stars are drawing attention to it by appearing nude on magazine covers, or discussing it at length in the press. Once again, we sense a tension between the film Love and Other Drugs wants to be – daring, ribald and sexy – and the immature, timid attitude that sees it failing to loosen up, failing to commit to a particular style and tone, and furiously hedging its bets. There's probably material for three or four decent movies in here, each of which would appeal to a very different audience, but the one we've got is a sorry old mess.
With The Social Network now having firmly established itself as one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year, and a prime contender for the end-of-year awards, there's a danger that Catfish will forever be known as 2010's 'other' Facebook movie. This would be an unfair designation, because while The Social Network is about many things, it's not really about Facebook, and certainly not in the way Catfish is. While Fincher and Sorkin used that site's origin story to spin a compelling narrative of greed, friendship and betrayal, Catfish actually engages with some of the complexities of social networking, and explores the way interacting through the internet has altered our notions of truth and relationships.
The film itself seems to blur the lines of truth in its storytelling, although those behind Catfish maintain that everything happened exactly as we are witnessing it. I have my doubts and suspicions, but this is a fascinating and brilliantly told story whatever way you look at it. It begins as the story of Nev Schulman, a photographer living in New York with his brother Ariel and their friend Henry Joost, the film's credited co-directors, whose cameras follow Nev as he strikes up a friendship with 8 year-old Abby Pierce. A remarkably gifted young artist from Michigan, Abby has produced paintings based on Nev's photography, which she saw online. Nev maintains a regular correspondence with Abby's mother Angela, who sends him prints of every work Abby produces, and soon a romance begins to develop between him and Abby's older sister Megan, even though they have never met. "She seems pretty awesome" Nev states, "at least, from Facebook."
All they know about this family is what they have been told over the phone or presented with online, so you won't be surprised to hear that nothing is exactly as it seems. The exact nature of those revelations should be kept under wraps, however, as one of the chief weapons in Catfish's arsenal is its element of surprise. Just when you think the film is veering into My Kid Could Paint That territory, it slips out of reach and develops into something much more complicated, and more troubling. The filmmakers deserve a lot of credit for the way they reveal their secrets at the right time and the manner in which they sustain the tension and intrigue as Nev slowly begins to have doubts about his new friends. The filmmakers may insist that we are watching the story unfold as it occurred in reality, but the manipulation involved, and the sense of clever filmmakers guiding the narrative, is evident. How much does this matter? Catfish is not the first film to blend the techniques of documentary and narrative storytelling, or to make claims for a story's veracity while knowing otherwise, but it is the nature of Catfish's truth that makes its final reveal such uncomfortable viewing, and leaves the filmmakers open to accusations of exploitation.
Personally, I found it incredibly riveting and ultimately quite moving, and perhaps the best film yet made about social connections in the internet age. The internet forms Catfish's whole aesthetic, with Google Maps charting the protagonists' progress (like the red lines across maps that indicated plane journeys in the Indiana Jones movies) and when they introduce a character, they do so by showing their Facebook profile picture, and hovering a cursor over it until their name appears. Nev begins to piece the mystery together using YouTube and Google Street View – it's like a very 21st century detective story, complete with its own mysterious femme fatale. Catfish is a film that needs to be watched with as little knowledge of its climax as possible – and I fear I've said too much already – so I'll close by simply stating that this film deserves to be seen and it deserves to be discussed. It is a one-of-a-kind picture that finds the perfect style to tell its story, and it leaves its audience with both nagging unanswered questions and a complex set of emotions to sift through. When a film is capable of making such an impact, does it matter whether it's truth or fiction?
The original TRON was released in the same year I was born, and I hope I've aged a little better than the film has in the intervening 28 years. When I watched Steven Lisberger's sci-fi adventure recently in preparation for the release of its belated sequel, it appeared hopelessly dated, with the visual effects now looking very creaky, and the lack of a strong storyline or characters making for an empty and dull viewing experience. However, the film still possesses one memorable sequence, the light-cycle race, and at the very least, its then-groundbreaking attempt to engage with the newfangled world of computers has the feel of filmmakers trying to give their audience something new. TRON is not a good film, but it was a bold one with fresh ideas and a unique style, and that alone is enough to set the bar at a level that TRON: Legacy doesn't come close to reaching.
TRON: Legacy has no such ambitions. While no expense has been spared in ensuring the film looks as slick and polished as can be, there's nothing inventive or imaginative under the surface of this unspeakably boring update. An early scene proves to be disappointingly self-prophetic, as software giant Encom announces its plan to release an upgrade package that has no significant improvements on previous versions, but will be presented in such a way that the masses will still buy it. Has a similar philosophy been at work behind the scenes of this movie? Almost everything that exists in TRON: Legacy has been lifted from another film, and the filmmakers appear to be gambling everything on their shiny presentation being enough to paper over the cracks.
It isn't enough, although director Joseph Kosinski does have one fairly smart idea up his sleeve, with the opening "real world" sequences of TRON: Legacy being shot in 2D before 3D is introduced as we move into the computer world. I guess this is the 21st century update on the way colour was used in films like The Wizard of Oz or A Matter of Life and Death to differentiate between realities, but this approach can't add any depth to Garrett Hedlund's strictly one-dimensional performance. The stiff and sullen Hedlund plays Sam Flynn, the son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), who was the chief protagonist in the first film. Some twenty years ago, Kevin disappeared and his son inherited Encom, although he doesn't show much interest in the business side of things, preferring instead to sabotage their plans, live in a shed, ride a motorbike and parachute off the top of skyscrapers.
All of this is very tedious to watch because it simply feels like we're marking time as we wait for Sam to enter "the grid". Eventually he does, receiving a mysterious message from the disused arcade his father owned and being blasted by a laser into the universe his father created. This is where dad has been trapped for the past two decades, after his own avatar Clu (also played by Bridges, albeit digitally enhanced to look 30 years younger) decided to elbow aside his maker and take over the running of the place himself. So, Sam's quest is to liberate his father and stop Clu from making his way into the real world, although this simple plotl leaves myriad unanswered questions and loose ends hanging. How exactly does a human exist in the digital world, and vice versa? More to the point, where does Kevin get the food that he is seen enjoying? Why are we told that Clu's faceless goons can't leave the grid, only to see them searching Flynn's off-grid base moments later? What exactly is Tron's motive? Is that really Cillian Murphy sitting there, looking bored? And what will the excruciating Michael Sheen's next biopic performance be: David Bowie, Jimmy Saville or Peter Stringfellow?
Plot threads and ideas are picked up and discarded at random. We are told that Quorra (Olivia Wilde, this film's Trinity) is the last of some kind of master race that was wiped out by Clu, although we never get a sense of what the significance or purpose of this is; the notion seems to exist solely to give the narrative a gravity that it hasn't earned. TRON: Legacy's writing is lazy, lazy, lazy. Every line of dialogue feels hackneyed and trite – including the tiresome Dude-isms Bridges is lumbered with – and the rules of this world seem to arbitrarily change according to the whims of the screenwriting team as if none of it matters. The thing is, for some viewers who will be happy to just enjoy the light show, it really won't matter.
A lot of effort has obviously been expended on TRON: Legacy's visuals, the film's chief selling point, but they seem very unimpressive to my jaded eyes. Compared to the lush, inviting world of last year's Avatar, the world of TRON – all glass, chrome and neon – seems sterile and uninspired. The novelty of the film's setting rapidly wears off, and while Kosinski ups the ante on the discus-throwing and light-cycle sequences, there's no charge of excitement because they feel so inconsequential. The whole of TRON: Legacy feels like that: empty, flat and meaningless. After years of development, backed by a near $200 million budget, and driven by the most cutting-edge technology available, we've somehow ended up with a film that feels less ambitious and more regressive than its 28 year-old predecessor. Is this progress?
Who is Tyler Perry? On this side of the Atlantic, the auteur is an unfamiliar name, but in the United States, he has quickly become one of the most consistently successful filmmakers around. His rapid rise to the top has been marked by critical derision, but the black audiences his films are made for continue to turn out in force every time he releases a new picture, which is often more than once a year. Clearly, a specific section of the moviegoing public has a taste for whatever it is that Perry has, but that attraction has remained a mystery to UK viewers, as despite the diverse population in this country, Perry's films have consistently failed to find distribution. That changed earlier this year when Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too? became the first of his films to hit British cinemas, although it barely made a dent at the box office and its arrival certainly went unnoticed by me.
All of which means For Colored Girls is my first taste of the Tyler Perry experience, and what a taste it is. Intense, melodramatic, shocking and powerfully acted the film may be, but it's also laughably unsubtle, clumsily directed and horribly written. Perry has assembled a formidable team of actresses to portray the women suffering at the hands of various men, but even these fine performers can't do much to elevate the stodgy material they have been asked to digest. The film is an adaptation of Ntozake Shange's 1975 stage play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf (yes, Enuf), and while Perry has thankfully cut that unwieldy title, his inability to edit judiciously severely hampers his misguided film.
Shange's play consisted of actresses delivering 20 poems that reflected the ongoing struggle of black women, and while it's easy to imagine such an approach being powerful in the theatre, monologues are a serious obstacle in cinema. During For Colored Girls, whenever a character reaches her lowest ebb, she begins reciting one of Shange's poems, which necessitates a drastic shift from the straightforward approach and banal dialogue Perry utilises elsewhere in the picture. When we see a soliloquy unfold on stage, we can appreciate it in its theatrical context, but here, in a more realistic setting, it feels hopelessly artificial. As we watch a 16 year-old recovering from a backstreet abortion (Tessa Thompson) or a battered rape victim (Anika Noni Rose) suddenly resort to unedited lumps of Shange's poetic text in a hospital or police station, all I could think was, nobody talks like that.
So the scenes that should be the most powerful in the film end up feeling false and overly stylised, which is a shame, because if Perry has one gift as a director, it lies in his ability to get everything his female cast has got to give. For Colored Girls takes place in New York, with most of the characters either living in the same walk-up or crossing the paths of those who do. There's battered wife Crystal (Kimberley Elise), promiscuous Tangie (Thandie Newton), barren social worker Kelly (Kerry Washington) and religious zealot Alice (Whoopi Goldberg) among others. These parts offer plenty of tragedy for such strong actresses to get their teeth into, and they all respond with passion and emotion, fleshing out roles that, as written, occasionally seem little more than stoically suffering martyrs. Perry clearly loves these women, and he shoots them in long takes and tight close-ups, all the better to see the bruises and the tears streaming down their cheeks, but his constant chasing of big moments eventually takes its toll.
Tyler Perry is not a subtle director, and throughout For Colored Girls he is always striving for impact. He is willing to play any card in the hope of jerking some tears, with his film covering domestic abuse, alcoholism, rape, HIV (apparently indicated by a tickly cough), secret homosexuality and – in a jaw-dropping scene that the film never recovers from – even a spectacular death for two young children. I'm struggling to think of a director who could frame that particular scene in a way that doesn't feel like a cheap and nasty stunt, but Perry, with his blunt and artless style, is certainly not the man for the job.
In the end, Perry's manipulative efforts are counterproductive. The film's desperate desire to move us feels just that – desperate – and with the repetitive poetic monologues constantly pulling us out of the drama, we never feel settled enough to involve ourselves in these women's stories. It's a disappointment, because some of the actresses among this ensemble are great talents who are too often saddled with token parts that fail to display their gifts, and while For Colored Girls is massively flawed, I guess I can understand why black women, starved of representation onscreen, take Perry's films to their hearts. However, I'm not sure what this picture has to offer for the rest of us. It's a lumpy, histrionic and overextended affair, and one that misses so many of the targets it aims for. I haven't seen the rest of Perry's oeuvre, but it feels like For Colored Girls is a self-conscious stab at a great work, a film that attempts to encapsulate everything about the black female experience in America. Sadly, long before the schmaltzy, tacky final sequence, the truth is exposed – for all of his lofty ambitions, Tyler Perry simply isn't good enuf.
The most intimate relationship in Easier with Practice exists between two people who don't meet for the majority of the picture. Davy (Brian Geraghty) is a young writer who is touring America with his brother Sean (Kel O'Neill) to promote his self-published collection of short stories. He is a nervous, introverted young man, uncomfortable in his own skin, so there's a certain logic to the way he attaches himself to a woman who only exists as a voice at the other end of a phone. When Davy is alone is his motel room one night, the phone rings and the mystery caller introduces herself as Nicole. The scene that follows is shot in a single take, the camera remaining discreetly above waist-height as the bewildered Davy sits on his bed and slowly warms to the idea of engaging in phone sex with Nicole. After that, Davy is smitten with a woman he has never met.
It sounds implausible, but Easier with Practice is apparently based on the real experience of Davy Rothbart, who wrote about his unusual encounter in GQ. Kyle Patrick Alvarez's directorial debut is a portrait of loneliness and it is given a vital sense of weight by Geraghty's sensitive performance in the lead role. His Davy recoils at any sense of real, physical intimacy – a fact that seems to have damaged one relationship, with old friend Samantha (Marguerite Moreau) – but with Nicole he starts to relax, and to open up. Although her first few calls result in Davy having to find private spots in which to masturbate, their post-coital conversations eventually begin to become more important. Nicole remains in control of the relationship, though, refusing to give Davy her number and leaving him in an anxious state as the hours and days pass without his phone ringing.
Easier With Practice is often insightful and touching in its view of people unwilling or incapable of engaging with the real world who take solace in fantasy relationships, but the film often feels frustratingly underdeveloped. This is a slight narrative on which to hang a feature and Alvarez often lets his film drift when Davy and Nicole aren't in conversation. There are a couple of sharp individual scenes here, with Alvarez drawing some tension from an awkward game of Truth or Dare, but a number of scenes seem to lack a sense of purpose or definition. The director does show glimpses of an interesting visual sense, though, and his compositions are consistently well thought-out, but his efforts are not complemented by David Rush Morrison's rather drab cinematography.
Fortunately, the whole picture gets a much-needed lift in its final quarter with a clever climax. The scene in which Davy finally gets to meet Nicole gives the narrative a sly twist and reaffirms Alvarez's skill at handling moments of uncomfortable intimacy, with both performers giving affectingly nervous turns. Easier with Practice ends as a smart and surprisingly absorbing study of lonely souls and of the way people afraid of being hurt create and reinforce barriers with those around them. The film has its misjudgements and its longueurs, but there is conviction and talent on display here, and a real attempt to engage with some intriguing notions of what a relationship should be. Such qualities are too rare to be easily dismissed.
