Filth (2013) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Director: John S. Baid
Screenwriter: John S. Baid
Stars: James McAvoy, Jamie Bell, Eddie Marsan, Jim Broardbent
Trailer link
IMDb page

A filthy introduction:

John S. Baid's "Filth" is dirty, wretched and out of control right from the get-go. It initially reminded me a lot of Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street", but as it moved into its second hour, I found myself much more engaged in the story than I ever was during "Wolf", the main reason being that this film actually has a sense of self awareness and some interesting characters. The movie is an adaptation of Irvine Welch's novel of the same name, and it stars James McAvoy in the leading role as a twisted, drunken, vile and corrupt Edinburgh cop by the name of Bruce Robertson, who has made it his personal goal in life to be as big of an ass to everyone around him as humanly possible. 

The darkest comedy of 2013:

This film is dark. Not just traditionally dark à la "Fargo", "In Bruges" or "American Beauty", but dark as in "American Psycho" with a twist of "Se7en" and a smidgen of "No Country For Old Men". In other words, do not go into this film expecting it to be light and entertaining, because even though it truly is funny, it also contains some of the most brooding, depressing and jaw dropping scenes I have seen in quite a while. The film is not gory or frightening in traditional horror movie fashion, but chocking and disturbing in a twisted "Requiem for a Dream"/"Trainspotting" heroin junkie kind of way. And yes, in case of Filth, that actually is a good thing.

Hugely stylised, but not just smoke and mirrors:

The thing that I did not like about The Wolf of Wall Street was the way in which it acted as if it had a lot to say, without actually saying anything worth remembering. Scorsese spent three hours trying to make his audience interested in Leonardo DiCaprio's character and failed miserably, and even though James McAvoy's character has a lot in common with Leo's, Filth is a much richer movie in terms of depth, thematic value and pure entertainment, because of the way in which it acknowledges what kind of genre it fits into, and sticks to those roots throughout the film. Sure, the actual story is barely better than mediocre and does hit a few fairly substantial rough patches, but given its blatantly grotesque and warped nature, the film as a whole does not suffer that much because of it. John S. Baid knew his possibilities and limits when he set out to adapt Irvine Welch's novel, and his efforts payed off in my opinion. 

James McAmazing:

Bruce Robertson is in almost every scene in this film, and James McAvoy does an immaculate job of portraying the character and his filthy lifestyle, delivering what I believe to be the pest performance of his young career. Robertson is a very physical and in-your-face type of person, and McAvoy portrays this aspect of his character in a very controlled and confident but also outrageous and explosive manner, which really emphasized his repulsively vulgar and bipolar personality. There is no denying the fact that Bruce is a filthy and disgusting person with no sense of compassion or empathy whatsoever, but his disturbing behaviour and complete disregard of everything decent and morally acceptable is still very interesting to behold. Thanks to a top notch performance and some truly great writing, the character of Bruce Robertson is the single most positively appalling characters put on screen in 2013, and the fact that DiCaprio got nominated for the Oscar over McAvoy makes me both sad and disappointed. 

The verdict:

Despite its average story and slightly unbelievable premise, John S. Baid's Filth is one of the most original movies I have seen in a long long time, as well as one of the funniest and most chocking movies of 2013. I am currently catching up on as many of the most interesting movies from last year as I can, in order come up with as believable a top 10 list of last year's movies as possible, and I would not be surprised if Filth makes that list. It is a grotesque piece of work that is likely to offend a whole bunch people, but in my opinion, this bombastic nature is the thing that makes the film as engaging and entertaining as it is. Those of you who liked The Wolf of Wall Street should go out and watch Filth right away, because in between those two thematically similar films, I think the latter is the better movie by far. 

Dallas Buyers Club (2013) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Screenwriters: Craig Borten, Melisa Wallack 
Stars: Matthed McConaughey, Jared Leto, Jennifer Garner 
Trailer link
IMDb page

The Matthew McConassance: 

After doing "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" in 2009, Matthew McConaughey took a break from acting. He had been making romantic comedies almost exclusively up until then, and was suffering from one of the most severe cases of typecasting syndrome in history, playing the typical good looking playboy in every movie he ever appeared in. The native Texan seemed determined to break this curse when he eventually returned to the screen in 2011, and after turning in a string of great performances in alternative low budget films such as Bernie, Killer Joe, Magic Mike and Mud, McConaughey quickly became on of the hottest American actors working today, landing leading roles in 2014's "Interstellar", the upcoming Christopher Nolan film, and one of 2013's leading Oscar contenders, Jean-Marc Vallée's long awaited Dallas Buyers Club. McConaughey seems to be unstoppable at the moment, and if you were to trust most critiques and audiences, his performance in this movie is the best he has ever given. 

A most troublesome decade:

Dallas Buyers Club had a long journey to the silver screen, with actors such as Woody Harrelson, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt attached to it, before Matthew McConaughey finally was able to get it off the ground by financing parts of the production himself. The film takes place in 1985, where a homophobic trailer trash-redneck by the name of Ron Woodroof is diagnosed with the HIV virus during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980's. No one knew anything about the virus back in 1985, and when Ron learns that the most effective drugs have not yet been approved for distribution in the US, his personal struggle to survive evolves into a full blown war against the pharmaceutical corporations and the doctors who are prescribing dangerous meds to sick Americans. Not only does Woodroof come up with a clever way of getting the right drugs to the people who desperately need them, but his predicament also serves as a catalyst to a personal transformation that changes his perception of life completely. 

Come aboard the Oscar-wagon!:

Given the humanistic and historical nature of the film, Dallas Buyers Club was destined to get a lot of awards consideration even before it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in early September. McConaughey and Jared Leto lost a lot of weight in order to portray their AIDS-smitten characters as truthfully as possible, the film makes good use of the classic "bad person turns into a better person though trials and tribulations"-recipe, and it deals with a piece of American history that had a lot of impact on the way things work today. That being said tough, Dallas Buyers Club actually has a lot to offer in terms of storytelling and artistic value, and thanks to some great editing and genuinely engaging performances, it manages to break the common "Oscar bait"-stereotype, and thus becomes more than an excuse for McConaughey and Leto to win some flashy statues. 

The man in the middle:

Anyone who follows the awards race at least somewhat actively, will know that Matthew McConaughey is the current favourite to win this year's Oscar for best performance by an actor in a leading role. I have not seen all of the best movies from 2013 yet, but based on what I saw in Dallas Buyers Club, it would come as a surprise to me if Matt M. does not take home the coveted statue. He is more than just unrecognizable in this movie, and even though I personally am getting a bit tired of his characteristic southern mannerisms, his performance as Ron Woodroof is very impressive, and he manages to make the character both appalling and engaging at the same time. I personally think his performance in Ben Nichols' Mud is slightly better, but him winning the Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club still would not be a bad thing in my opinion. 

A double-edge sword of editing:

One of the things that elevated this film from "good" to "very good" for me, is the way in which some the scenes are edited. Especially the first 45 minutes felt very snappy and engaging in my opinion, because instead of using long expositional chunks of dialogue to propel the story he was trying to tell, the director, who also co-edited the film, chose to use facial expressions and quick cuts in order to explain what happens next. I absolutely love when movies pull this off effectively, and Dallas Buyers Club does it very very well. Jean-Marc Vallée and Martin Pensa did get an Oscar nod for best editing, and had the middle portion of the film not suffered from some tonal inconsistencies and a few fairly repetitive scenes, I think they would have been the front runners in this category. As it is the case with all of the other technical awards however, "Gravity" probably will end up taking it home instead. 

A very solid over all product: 

In my opinion, Dallas Buyers Club is a very good movie with some very good central performances, that could have been even better if its budget had been a little more generous. A significant part of the the middle of the film did feel repetitive and a bit off kilter in my opinion, and I was not surprised to learn that the movie was shot in just 27 days on a budget of 4,5 million dollars, often using hand held cameras and natural lighting. This film is a passion project for the director and most of the main cast; a fact that clearly comes to show in some of its more emotional scenes, and I respect them for creating such a good movie with what little money and time they had on their hands. Dallas Buyers Club is just short of being one of my favourite films of 2013, but it is still one heck of a movie that I would recommend to just about anyone who enjoys good movies and incredible acting. 

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Director: Martin Scorsese 
Screenwriter: Terence winter
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey, Kyle Chandler
Trailer link
IMDb page


Hello problem, what seems to be the officer?:

For me personally, "The Wolf of Wall Street" is the single most outrageous and over the top depiction of greed and capitalism I have ever seen. In a scene that serves as a pretty good indicator as to what we have in store, Leonardo DeCaprios's character is seen blowing cocaine up a prostitute's ass just a few minutes into the movie, and from then on out, the movie basically evolved into a combination of "American Pie" and "Wall Street" on steroids. In other words: Scorsese's latest collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio is a three hour rampaging beast of a movie with huge amounts of nudity, drugs, money and champaign, and very low amounts of moral, manners and plot.

Greed is good?:
The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the real life experiences of Jordan Belfort, who was one of the most successful and most deceitful stockbrokers in New York during the 1980's and 1990's. Belfort is portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio, and as the audience follows him on his journey from 22-year-old college graduate to one of the richest men on Wall Street, we get a somewhat blurred insight into the mindset of some the most greedy and morally bankrupt people who have ever walked the face of the earth. Leo and Scorsese have said in interviews that one their goals with the movie was to show how greed and extreme cases of materialism can be both intoxicating and blinding, in an attempt to draw a parallel to the financial situation of today. However, saying that a movie has a message and a moral is easy enough, but actually getting those points across to the audience is an entire different story. 

Poetic injustice:
In the movie as well as well as real life, Jordan Belfort and his colleague Donnie Azoff (who is portrayed by Jonah Hill in the film), were a couple of grade A douchebags. Some film critiques have been complaining about the lack of real punishment that they and a lot of the other Wall Street guys in this film receive for their heinous acts towards the global economy, and Scorsese's choice not to show how the average working  man was affected by and punished for their greedy behavior has also been a topic of controversy. To me though, this isolated depiction of the luxurious life on the top of the mountain actually worked quite well, because of the way in which it showed how little these guys cared about the outside world. All we see is drugs, parties, prostitutes, mansions, yachts, helicopters and Armani suits, because according to the main characters, those things were the only parts of life that really mattered. 

Three laughs in as many hours:
As of 13.1-14, The Wolf of Wall Street has a rating of 8,7 on IMDb, and a lot people are claiming that it is the absolute best movie of 2013, mainly because of how "outrageously hilarious" it is. I am not one those people. Sure, there are at least three genuinely funny laugh out loud moments in the film, but that is just about it. The drug-infused hard partying nature of the first tho thirds of the movie got stale after thirty minutes in my opinion, and whilst I was sitting there in the cinema with my arms crossed feeling like an old boring man, the rest of the audience just kept on barfing with laughter. I do admit that the air-plane scene (hilfe!) and the cerebral palsy sequence hit home with me in a big way, but saying that scenes like these are what makes The Wolf of Wall Street the best movie of 2013 is unheard of in my opinion. I did not find this film nearly as entertaining as most people give it credit for, and for a three hour movie that relies entirely on mindless high octane humor, that is not exactly a good thing. 

A thematically indecisive mess:
As if being way too long and not succeeding very well in its main objective was not enough, I still have not discussed my biggest problem with Scorsese's latest picture. I absolutely love Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Departed, Shutter Island and Gangs of New York, but the familiar sense of depth, meaning, care and importance that all of these great Scorsese movies have in common is nowhere to be found in The Wolf of Wall Street. Things that we are supposed to care about begin to take place in the last third of the movie, but because of the outrageous and completely uncontrolled ferocity of the previous acts, I had absolutely no sympathy for any of the main characters, and therefore could not have cared less about what was going to happen to them. The problem is not that Belfort and the rest of the characters were a bunch of ignorant assholes, but that they were so cartoonishly portrayed that they did not feel like human beings at all. The fact that the movie had spend so much time acting like an amped up episode of America Gone Wild resulted in me being utterly indifferent when I was actually supposed to be emotionally engaged, and a few of the last scenes felt especially shoehorned and thematically misplaced due to this tonal inconstancy. Opting for a grounded finale just is not the way to go when you have spent 150 minutes trying to do something entirely different. 

In conclusion:
For a movie that is as long as this one is, The Wolf of Wall Street had surprisingly little to say. Its incredibly loud and hard partying nature is sure to attract a lot of teenagers and young adults tot he theaters, and the infamous Leonardo DiCaprio circle jerk is destined to reach even higher heights from now on. Scorsese's latest film admittedly is a lot of fun at times, but it most certainly was not enough to fill out three hours of screen time, especially when you consider the amount of talent involved. Jonah Hill does nail his East Coast accent very well, but I do not think that DiCaprio deserves all the praise he has been getting at all. Even though he is basically doing what Jim Carrey and Gary Oldman have been for decades in this film (going crazy and being physically hyperactive), people still claim that he delivers one of the best performances of the year, which is more than confusing to me. I do not hate the guy, I just think that he is vastly overrated, and this performance is no exception. When it comes down to it, "overrated" is probably the most fitting way of describing The Wolf of Wall Street as a whole, at least in my humble opinion. Sorry Marty. 

A History of Violence (2005) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Director: David Cronenberg
Screenwriter: Josh Olsen
Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, John Hurt, Ed Harris
Trailer link
IMDb page

Hype or die:

As a film buff who has heard a lot of great things about David Cronenberg but never actually seen any of his films, my expectations for "A History of Violence" were higher than I am happy to admit. Hype, no matter if it is negative or positive, is often one of the main reasons why some movies completely miss the mark for me, and in case of this film, I half expected it to be one of the best movies I was ever going to see. On all the movie forums, websites, podcasts and youtube channels I frequently go to,  Cronenberg is praised as one of the very best existentialistic filmmakers out there, and one of the most thematically talented directors as well. On top of that, I have heard film critiques say that Viggo Mortensen's performance in this particular film is on par with Marlon Brando's performance in "On the Waterfront" and Robert De Niro's performance in "Taxi Driver". With all this taken into account, it is pretty safe to say that my expectations for A History of Violence were completely off the charts. 

The american dream gone wrong:

Mortensen's character, Tom Stall, is a gentle and friendly restaurant owner who lives in a small american town with his wife and two kids. He works hard to support his loving family through honest labour, he is well known and respected in the local community, and he generally seems to have everything going for him. Sadly, this peace is broken when two criminals just happen to drop by his restaurant one night. The robbers threaten to kill one of Tom's employees, to which he responds by shooting both of them in an act of self defense. To his own distaste, this incident turns him into a local hero. No matter how hard he tries to avoid talking about the event, the media will not let his story rest, and he ends up becoming a true overnight sensation. This attention draws all kinds of people to Tom's restaurant from all over the country, and when one particular person with ties to his past shows up and claims that our protagonist is not who he says he is, his entire way of life comes very close to collapsing into a chaos of blood, murder and deceit. 

Expectation is the root of all heartache:

In spite of my high hopes for the movie and huge respect for Viggo Mortensen as an actor, A History of Violence immediately triggered a bad nerve for me. I got a feeling that I was not going to like where it was going as soon as Tom's daughter showed up on screen, and it sadly did not take long before this suspicion was fully confirmed. Given all the good things I had heard prior to watching it, I was complete taken aback by the (in my opinion) sloppy  and almost amateurish dialogue and the beyond generic course of storytelling that this movie features, and this feeling of unprofessionalism and incompleteness stayed with me for the entirety of the movie's running time. I know that this is not the popular opinion about the film, and I am aware that I just pissed off a lot Cronenberg fans, but I have to be honest here. To me, this movie felt like a cheap made-for-TV movie from beginning to end. 

A less than overwhelming script: 

As mentioned, the dialogue in A History of Violence felt poor from the very beginning. I found it extremely predictable and almost gutwrenchingly generic most of the time, especially when it came to the daughter and the son, and the script in itself felt very cliched and uninspired as a whole. For an example, the film features the single most stereotypical and overdone portrayal of the classic high school bully I have seen in my entire life. No matter how much you might disagree with me on my over all thoughts about the film, I do not think that anyone who has actually seen the movie will disagree with me on this. This guy basically has all the traits of any high school jackass put to film since the invention of the video camera; he is arrogant, he picks on the the protagonist's kid because he defeated him in a game of baseball, he is unintelligent and loud mouthed, he sports the classic combed back hairstyle, he drinks and drives, he humiliates the son in public, and ends up getting his ass kicked because of his bad behaviour. However, the absolute worst thing about this character is that he adds nothing to the plot at all. The only thing he is good for is making the audience do a lot of toe-cringing, face-palming and teeth-clenching.

"I see all this potential, and I see it squandered":

In terms of the actual story of Tom Stall's unwanted fame, his ambiguous past and the trouble that killing those two guys in the restaurant causes him, I actually do see how it could have been interesting. All stories deserve to be told in my opinion, and if done right, even the most generic set of overused plot devices and most uninspired story arcs have the potential to become something worth watching. Nicholas Winding Refn's "Drive", my personal favourite movie of all time, is a brilliant example of this. Had Drive been made by any other director, it might very well have turned into yet another stale, high octane, Jason Statham transporter-type movie, but because of Refn's vision and creativity, it turned into one of the best movies of recent memory instead. The way I see it, A History of Violence had the opportunity to do something similar. As it stands though, it remains utterly common, unimaginative, uninventive and chastised in my opinion, and its waste of potential and disappointing nature is my biggest gripe about it as whole. 

My final thoughts:

Even though I have only talked about the stuff that I did not appreciate, A History of Violence does a have a few slightly redeeming qualities to it. I never found it downright boring, Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello and John Hurt all portray their characters quite well, and the final scene is actually somewhat intriguing and well structured. As a whole though, there are simply way too many disappointing aspects in this film for me to say that I like it. I do realize that a lot of people absolutely love this movie, and even though I have done my best to conduct my criticism of it in a respectable and unhateful manner, I am well aware that a lot of readers might still find this review offensive. I will not apologize for my point of view, by rest assured that I did not set out to offend anyone by writing this blog post. I wanted to love Cronenberg's A History of violence with all my heart, so much so that I bough it on Blu-Ray without having even seen it, and it pains me to say that I was severely let down. In my opinion, A History of Violence had a lot promise, but ended up completely empty handed due to poor execution and lackluster writing.