Month: October 2017

Good Time (2017)

Written for RAF News November 2017

Good Time opens with a heist. The idea has been done many times before but this is different. It’s simple and stripped back but shown with style and real intensity. Gripped from the opening it is clear that this entire film will not be easy for anyone involved. It is a pulpy crime thriller that never slows down and plays out largely as one intense chase.

The guys behind the robbery are brothers, as are the directors of the film. Nik (played by co-director Ben Safdie) is mentally handicapped, talked into the job by his brother Connie, the wily one always with a plan. When Nik is caught by police, Connie makes it his mission to break him out of prison whatever it takes.

Connie is constantly finding himself in extreme, distressing situations and having to find a way out. Though flawed he has a survival instinct and in fact his ability to use people really comes in handy. Robert Pattinson is great in this part, managing to convey desperation but never without ego or pride.

Early on, when trying to post bail money for his brother’s release, a series of phone calls take place, overlapping with each other and adding to the cacophony of stress. This is as low as the stakes get and yet the tension is unescapable. Add in the classic genre ingredients of guns, drugs and guard dogs and you might get an idea of where it is headed.

Combining uncomfortably close camera with an intense synth score and hurled through never ending trials, the affect of this film is physical. What begins as nausea develops into pure adrenal exhilaration. It has a video game kind of logic where sudden problems need a solution, where people are reduced to tools, but it has the benefit of being utterly cinematic.

The ironic title might be misleading but if you’re a sadist, an adrenaline junkie or just looking for exciting cinema – this is a great time.

Ambition

Colouring a picture of a fireman and noting that the act of saving a cat from a tree is ‘nice’, I ask the boy if he wants to be a fireman. ‘No I can’t, I don’t have a helmet.’ I tell him that this doesn’t matter and ask about when he’s older, if he’d want to be a fireman. He pauses his colouring to think about this. What do you want to be?

‘Charmeleon’

So more on the arson side of fire, but I admire him not aiming for Charizard – keeping his dreams realistic.

Sirens

It was past midnight. I had just dropped a friend home after work when he had text me to say one of my tail lights was out. Another fault to add to the list. Bombing it home a white car comes up behind me, and after flying over a roundabout it keeps my speed so I assume it’s going to overtake and speed ahead. Thats when the blue silent disco starts in my rearview.

One officer checks the back, the other the front. He says he smells unburnt fuel and notices the engine light on. Apparently I have a headlight out, as well as a tail light. Aw I know that one! I pull out my phone with the perfect alibi providing text. He shines a torch on my face. Don’t I know you? Have I pulled you over before? No, never been pulled over before – I say, perhaps too proud of myself considering the situation. Was I going a bit fast? (I offer forward like a brazen fucking idiot. It must have looked like I was speeding away from a crash). My instinct was to speed up as you pulled up behind me. Yeah you shouldn’t do that.

The Wizard of Ozark

I was reluctant to start another Netflix series, despite getting a couple of recommendations. Ever since I had experienced the aggressive evangelism of Breaking Bad enthusiasts, forcing me to watch the entire show and to be left unfulfilled and underwhelmed, I have become distrusting of opinions on tv shows.

The first episode of Ozark establishes a certain style, it’s sharp dialogue and darkly comic tone, it’s blue tint and metallic percussive score – building tension much like Punch Drunk Love. On top of that it’s quick. To the point where it felt like it spent all of it’s narrative chips by the end.

It felt like it had reached the peak of action and tension. That it could have built up to this a little more and had nowhere left to go. At the end of the episode we are in the Ozarks, a coastal shit-town with nothing going on. This is what kept me from watching the second episode. Where could it go from here that would be as interesting?

When I got around to watching the second episode I realised that this pace was not a symptom of trying to make the pilot interesting – it wasn’t a pilot after all – it was part of the style. It didn’t need to set up a twist or reveal, because as the plot unfolds there are new and interesting ideas being explored quickly.

Stranded in the Ozarks, the show takes the suburbia trope of a family pretending to be happy and together whilst all having their dirty secrets and turns it inside out. The husband is discovered to be a a criminal and his wife has been cheating on him – they move house to save their lives and commit to the criminal lifestyle and tell their kids that this is what they’re doing. They have confessed their sins and are embracing their lifestyle because they have nothing left to lose. They move in with a guy who has a fatal illness and is the perfect embodiment of this mentality – they don’t give a fuck.

There is something of Walter White in Marty Byrde. He is remarkably clever and thinks logically. He understands people and can find solutions. Where they differ is that Walter White is all about action, he will back himself into a corner and think of a way to blow the walls down around him. Byrde’s gift is in language. He has a highly developed ability to reason with a Sorkinesque wit and so can talk his way out of anything.

White is a creator: of drugs, bombs, he even creates himself a character complete with costume. He is a stage magician with all the grandeur and gaudy showmanship, where Byrde is actually fucking magic, needing no props or stage. He is egoless, serving a purpose and has no pride in his gains. He is ashamed if anything.

Breaking Bad had a cinematic style in it’s use of camera and editing. It has a showy nature that resonates with it’s protagonist. Ozark is precisely the opposite.

For now at least… I’ve watched three episodes. I’m in.