Applaus ***½

Director: Martin Pieter Zandvliet
Cast: Paprika Steen, Michael Falch, Shanti Roney
Otto Leonardo Steen Rieks, Noel Koch-Søfeldt, Lars Brygmann

Almost a monologue of a movie, Applaus is a magnificent showcase for leading lady Paprika Steen. She plays Thea Barfoed, a famed theater actress trying to resume her life after alcoholism lead her to divorce and losing the custody of her children.
She tries to convince her ex-husband Christian (Falch) that she is ready to be a mother again and manipulates him to get her children back.
At its most basic, Applaus is none other than the dream movie for an actress and in theory it's a walk in the park towards awards glory; however, Steen grabs all of the stereotypes we'd expect from this kind of performance and slaps us right on the face by creating a woman that's creating herself in front of our eyes.
The plot is basically a slice out of Thea's complicated life and we see her in a series of vignettes as she spends time with her children, deals with her lawyer, tries to avoid the temptation of alcohol and most interesting of all, we see her acting.
The play she's in is Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?, where of course she plays Martha and what results so fascinating about watching her play this iconic character is that the director isn't trying to conceal that we should be drawing parallels between the character and the woman playing her.
The truly perplexing thing is that even though the director sees it and the audience sees it, Thea seems to have no idea of what's going on. This is a woman who becomes fully alive on stage yet fails to get a clue in "real life".
That she's capable of separating craft from reality lets us know that Thea is in fact a great actress and more often than not we are left craving to see her play other parts.
What Steen provides then is a multilayered performance that goes beyond any "life as a stage" metaphors and concentrates on the humanity that lingers in this troubled woman,
Watching her make jokes backstage we get a feeling that she's drawing inspiration from some of the great divas, yet when she accuses her ex-husband of having turned her beloved offspring into "Nazi children" we understand that she hasn't truly learned how to modulate all this intensity into the person she's trying to become.
On most scenes we see Steen all by herself, even when she's with other people, the camera follows her mostly. We see her in closeup during some of her most intimate moments and not for a single second do we detect any vanity emanating from Steen, in fact she encourages us to see the insecurity in Thea.
During the film's most haunting sequence, Thea tries to make amends with a stranger (Roney) she was rude to at a bar. After some small talk, she takes him home and for the first time we see her coming to terms with all she's done.
Going from playful and childlike, to terrified and ultimately ashamed, Steen goes through an intense prism of emotions that will leave you astounded. "This isn't a part, it's my life" says Thea and with the conviction with which she is played by Steen, we never would dare to doubt her.

Exit Through the Gift Shop ***

Director: Banksy

What better way to explore what makes something "art" than with a film that itself is questioned for its artistic merits. Such is the premise of Exit Through the Gift Shop the documentary debut feature of iconic street artist Banksy.
His film concentrates on the rise of Mr. Brainwash, a street artist who made a name for himself out of the blue and has been hailed by the press and media for his refreshing of pop art.
When we first meet Brainwash, he goes by the name of Thierry Guetta. He's a French immigrant trying to make a living by selling old clothes at vintage prices.
Obsessed with recording everything with his video camera, Guetta becomes fascinated by street art and soon begins to make a documentary on the rising art form by traveling all over the world and meeting people like Shepard Fairey (of the famous Obama "Hope" poster).
Soon Thierry realizes he's missing the big one in his documentary and sets on finding the reclusive Banksy. He succeeds and develops a work relationship with the artist who suggests Thierry dedicates to art making and leaves the documentary in his hands.
With this simple twist, as one art form replaces another we can begin to ponder on the nature of what makes this movie a documentary.
Banksy is known not only for his stunning graffiti but also for being one of the biggest public pranksters in the world and everything about his debut film seems too good to be true.
How do we know for starters if the movie is even being made by him when nobody in the world knows his real identity?
When we see him here it's only from the back or in shadows using an altered voice. How do we know if this is the real work of Banksy when in the film he inspires Thierry to emulate his art.
The film explores this notions of fake and worth using techniques that remind us of a mockumentary minus the winks. We might say this is also a trait of Bansky's work and use it in his favor to attribute this work to him completely.
If the film is a hoax then Thierry Guetta has got to be one of the most fascinating fictitious creations in recent film history. Watching him in action is seeing someone so uniquely strange that we can't really bring ourselves to believe he's a fake. After all haven't we been trained to believe reality is usually stranger than fiction?
If he's in fact a character then we are witnessing work by an actor that could easily leave Paul Giamatti out of a job as the go-to-guy for down to Earth quirkiness.
That he's described in a serious tone as "someone with mental problems who happened to have a video camera" makes him even more compelling, as if he was just brought to the world to be the object of study and-why not-different characterizations.
Perhaps the most significant element in the film is the fact that at some point it becomes a palindrome of sorts. It begins with Guetta being a filmmaker and becoming an artist and finishes with Banksy leaving his street art on the side for a while and becoming a movie director.
If this sounds a bit too Bergman by way of Lichtenstein then the movie, whatever its real nature may be, might as well just had its way with you.

Style Sunday.

The one thing Angelina Jolie should learn is that white, and not black as she seems to think, is the color that suits her best. Remember that pantsuit she wore to the Oscars about seven years ago? She was perfect in it!
This time around she's stunning in a simple Versace dress with a sexy leg opening. Her hair isn't that great but notice how the white brings out the color in her eyes. Stick to this Jolie!

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.


Best campaign of the year? Abso-freaking-lutely!
This image of a shattered Natalie Portman is both beautiful and very, very creepy.
What lies under the cracking shell?
Each poster for Black Swan has been better than the last. Although the set of teasers made by UK design group La Boca, gets the crown...


Is that Mjöllnir in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Now that's a big hammer!
I have never really been a fan of Thor or any comic book for that matter and I'm not sure I'm curious as to what this film adaptation will bring us.


Any of you out there care to enlighten me why I should be into Thor?

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger **

Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Pauline Collins, Anna Friel
Anthony Hopkins, Neil Jackson, Gemma Jones, Freida Pinto
Lucy Punch, Naomi Watts

Throughout his filmography, Woody Allen has been characterized for delivering existentialist meditations filtered through comedy and relationships, yet even his darkest movies have been characterized by something that resembles hope. Yes, even in something like Interiors, we find ourselves finding that there's always more than meets the tragic eye.
It's a surprise then to find the master feeling so jaded in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. And it's not that feeling of bitterness itself what makes the film fail where other of his works have blossomed, it's just that it feels more like a work in progress than an actual film.
For all the plot twists, winks at some sort of divine justice and quips Allen inserts here, there's also an unintentional sense of disconnect within the characters who this time merely seem to become puppets in a convoluted plot that doesn't know where it's going.
The plot is quintessential Allen, a series of interconnected characters all trying to find their way in the misery of life.
We first meet Helena (Jones) a woman who has just been abandoned by her husband (Hopkins) who ends up marrying former prostitute Charmaine (Punch). Heartbroken, Helena begins to visit a fortuneteller (a delightful Collins) who begins to fix her life.
Helena's daughter Sally (Watts) has developed a crush on her employer (Banderas who curiously isn't the stranger from the title) while her husband (Brolin) tries to get out of his writer block by spying at their sensual neighbor (Pinto).
Allen's dialogues are fascinating as usual, even if sometimes the quips sound forced and cold and while it would be easy to say that any Allen is better than most things playing out there, the truth is that this film in particular shows that as a writer some of his tricks don't work as they used to.
For all the charm contained in the fact that his characters still say things like "erotic" and study musicology sometimes his lines feel derivative. This movie would've been aided by the use of silence and restraint.
If Allen fails a bit, his actors are mostly fantastic (even if this cast doesn't particularly fit together). Brolin broods marvelously and reaches a level of dishevelment that's an act upon itself, while Watts should get an award for being the actress who reached the lower depths of selfdeprecation in films this year. When she confronts a character to ask him if he ever fathomed the idea of falling in love with her, she asks it from a place of such pain that your heart will be broken along with her character's dignity.
It's interesting to see that when it comes to the two central characters in the film Allen pretty much redoes Interiors.
Jones as the resentful wife gives a layered performance filled with the over the top theatrics muffled by her sensitive British comedic timing, it's like watching Blance Dubois being played by Helen Mirren's version of Queen Elizabeth.
Then there's Punch who proves that nobody writes a hooker with a heart of gold like Woody does. Sometimes she comes off looking as an inferior version of Mira Sorvino's character in Mighty Aphrodite but even in cliché Punch finds an odd sense of beauty. Watch her act next to Hopkins, while he tries a bit too hard, she flows effortlessly like a skanky Eliza Dolittle.
It's the cast that make this stranger more alluring than he has any right to be.

The Town ***

Director: Ben Affleck
Cast: Ben Affleck, Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall
Blake Lively, Chris Cooper, Titus Welliver, Slaine, Pete Postlethwaite

Who would've guessed that in his directing Ben Affleck would manifest all the straightforwardness he fails to present in his redundant work as a thespian? The Town is barely his second directorial effort and already he's developing what could be called a style. Of course Affleck's style is highly influenced, if not directly extracted, from the work of Clint Eastwood (the cinematography and sense of in-justice) and Martin Scorsese (the seductiveness of crime as a lifestyle) but with this and Gone Baby Gone he seems to have mastered what it takes to deliver a no-bullshit film in what can be referred to as a "classic style".
His film is straight out of this universe where crime is the only kind of life and the one everyone's trying to escape. Affleck plays Doug MacRay, a career criminal who falls in love with Claire (Hall), the bank manager he takes hostage after one of his gang's heists gets threatening.
In Claire, Doug sees the perfect way to atone for his sins while giving himself a second chance. Of course this threatens the stability of his gang as his friend James (Renner) begins to resent Doug for wanting to leave and they also end at the mercy of the local kingpin (Postlethwaite).
The Town has all the makings of a movie we've seen countless times, or at least to come from the same place where these movies have come from. There's also an FBI agent, keen on catching the criminals and even a femme fatale, in the shape of Lively's Krista, a woman who had an affair with Doug and is reluctant to see him move on.
It seems that every element and every character in the film are trying to drag Doug down with them and in a way it's fascinating to see how Affleck manages to make us sympathize with this character who is unarguably guilty of several crimes. Yet we find ourselves rooting for him to succeed in his relationship with Claire for example and in the bloody climax we still have an idea of him as some sort of hero.
The film boasts an impressive cast and all of them deliver efficient work. The seriously underrated Hall gives Claire the complexity needed to empathize with her even when she makes strange choices, Hamm is superb, even if nothing is really demanded of him other than to look heroic and use the hell out of his Superman looks and Cooper is fantastic in a single scene.
Renner gives the film's best performance as he creates a character that's as real as he's cinematic. James is one part Method acting, two parts hybrid between James Cagney and Richard Widmark. He's electrifying!
In the biggest setpieces he seems to be fueling the energy from within his body and you can not take your eyes off him even as he commits the most gruesome acts of violence.
It has to be said that Affleck is a master at action sequences, there isn't a single action scene in this movie that feels lacking or unnecessary. They are executed with such precision and stamina that you believe they are recreations of things we might've seen on the news.
If he fails a bit with the most intimate scenes, it only means that he's still finding his niche (there are several red herrings that feel more like plot holes than Hitchcockian techniques) but for all that matters, The Town is nothing if not promising.

(Future) Crush of the Week.

...and so begins my obsession with everything that will be the film adaptation of One Day.