Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey

There’s no denying Elmo from Sesame Street is one adorable little critter, which makes the proposition of a documentary on the man with his arm up his backside a rather charming one. Constance Marks provides a satisfying account on Kevin Clash’s journey from aspiring puppeteer to major player on the world famous kids’ show, but somehow avoids probing deeper into the relationship with his estranged wife and daughter. One could argue that this is a conscious decision to focus more on Clash’s career, but a film that showed how a beloved muppet could tear a family apart would have made for more compelling viewing.

3/5 

This is 40

Contrary to what the trailers and posters may say, this sort of sequel to Knocked Up really isn’t a sequel at all. It hardly feels like a proper spin-off either. At the risk of sounding like Mufasa, Judd Apatow’s latest offering feels like the third film in what could be deemed the director’s “circle of life” trilogy.

If Knocked Up was about the anxiety of giving birth and Funny People was about confronting our fear of death, then This is 40 deals with the unassuming but very present hardships of everyday life. In fact, despite the presence of bankable comedians in the starring roles, an argument could be made that these titles share more in common with cinéma vérité – in which the focus is less on plot and more on people – than they do with traditional comedy.

Sound a bit too pompous for your taste? Oh, screw it. Here’s the deal: This is 40 is very funny. It has two extremely likeable leads to root for, a couple of cameos from the usual suspects that usually crop up in Apatow’s films and it is, of course, laden with dick jokes and swearing so colourful, you could paint a rainbow if you took the time to list all the profanities.

Ostensibly the story of a married couple turning forty, there is actually very little plot to speak of. To be honest, most of the time it feels like all Apatow’s doing is letting the camera roll while he lets his actors converse, bicker, kiss and make up (sometimes not even in that order), but that is by no means a hindrance. If anything, watching these characters simply go through the daily motions without the need to stick to a narrative structure makes them far more relatable, especially to viewers who happen to be forty year old parents.

No doubt, the fact that it’s Apatow’s real life family in front of the camera definitely helps. Paul Rudd is likeable as ever and he’s a worthy stand-in dad/husband for the director, but it’s Leslie Mann who walks away with the film. Usually seen in kooky supporting roles, here she proves her worth as a leading lady whilst also getting to showcase a tender side that we only glimpsed in Funny People, courtesy of her two daughters Maude and Iris – together, the three of them even manage to make dancing to a Nicki Minaj song look adorable.

It’s not all smooth sailing, mind. Some gags feel a bit forced and over-stretched in places purely for the sake of comedy, such as Melissa McCarthy’s endless tirade at a PTA meeting. Meanwhile, Megan Fox’s shop assistant-cum-escort is every bit as superficial and surplus to requirements as she sounds and is here purely on eye candy duties. It’s a shame, especially when we could’ve benefitted from a bit more of Jason Segel, whose character coins the kind of brilliant expression you will hear bachelors quoting for months on end (“I’m gonna Clooney it”).

The end result is a film that will please fans of Apatow’s lewd yet heartfelt comedy, but is also likely to resonate on a more personal level with couples and parents alike. Or, to put it more succinctly, this is good.

4/5

Hitchcock

The trouble with biopics is that many of them feel like history lessons. Gandhi, Amadeus and Malcolm X are just a few of the old school films to have tried to condense the lives of iconic figures into overlong movies laden with historical heft, but often bereft of substance and characterisation. However, a new wave of sorts has emerged in more recent years, as films like W, Nowhere Boy and My Week with Marilyn have eschewed the old format and adopted instead a more focused approach, by concentrating on a specific period of these individuals’ lives to reveal the man/woman behind the icon.

Hitchcock falls in the latter category of biopics, as John J. McLaughlin’s script keeps the plot strictly confined to the production of Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock’s legendary thriller that gave birth to the slasher genre. The concept looks undeniably solid on paper and the prospect of peeking into the master of suspense’s psyche via Psycho is rather alluring, but there is something distinctively amiss in Sacha Gervasi’s film.

The most obvious misstep is having Hitch (“hold the Cock”) being confronted on regular intervals by apparitions of Ed Gein, the real life cross-dressing serial killer Norman Bates was originally based on. Gein is clearly supposed to be a manifestation of Hitchcock’s own personal demons, but it’s a baffling plot device which has already been overused in other biopics ad nauseam (see Ray or The Iron Lady). At least had he been visited by Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart, we would’ve had a bit of style to go with Hitch’s dry wit.

The big man himself is also somewhat befuddling. No one’s questioning Anthony Hopkins’ skills as an actor or his ability to put a personal spin on a real life character, as he so ably demonstrated in Nixon. But throughout Hitchcock he looks like he’s having too much fun doing an impersonation of the rotund filmmaker, rather than truly inhabiting him. It’s a spot on impression – he’s got the cadence down pat and the fat suit fits snugly – but little more than that.

Hopkins’ performance is not even the most memorable one in the film, which is a hindrance when you think his character’s name carries not only the film, but also the title. No, that honour goes to Helen Mirren as Alfred’s wife Alma, quietly impressive in the role of a gifted yet dissatisfied writer forced to stand in her husband’s imposing shadow. Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel and James D’Arcy also feature as the cast of Pyscho, although you do wonder whether their contracts stated that all they had to do was show up, considering their remarkably brief screen time.

Coincidentally, Hitchcock’s biggest flaw is indeed its brevity. For a film about what some deem to be the greatest storyteller ever to work in Hollywood, 98 minutes feel like a skimpy running time. As a result, Hitch’s unhealthy obsession with blondes, his difficult relationship with actors and, more importantly, his very own insecurities that informed Pyscho’s themes are all rushed through and barely hinted at. Perhaps a three hour biopic portraying his varied and illustrious career would’ve done Alfred Hitchcock more justice after all.

2/5

Zero Dark Thirty

Here’s the hard-hitting truth: while there have been quite a few classics inspired by the Vietnam War (and yes, we are including Rambo: First Blood Part II on that list), the equally controversial War on Terror has spawned virtually no contenders worthy of going toe to toe with the impressive work churned out by Stone, Cimino and Coppola throughout the 70s and 80s.

But then again, no cocky empirical statement would be complete without the mention of an honourable exception, which in this case is Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, a remarkably well shot film that was bold enough to leave out the politics and focus instead on the psyche of a man who is more at home dismantling bombs than he is at picking out breakfast cereals for his son. Given the amount of acclaim bestowed on Bigelow for her work on Locker, there was never any doubt she was the right director for a film about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Zero Dark Thirty is not an easy film to sit through. Apart from the fact that it is bum-achingly long and the characters speak in the kind of register that is bewildering to us non-CIA folk, it’s also unwilling to conform to the traditional conventions of characterization. What that means, essentially, is that in this film the “good guys” are often seen performing the kind of acts we usually associate with the villains, which admittedly makes it difficult for the audience to identify or sympathize with them. The film’s opening scene is unflinching in its depiction of the shockingly methodical torture a prisoner is put through during his interrogation – the fact that it comes at the hands of a likeable officer (Jason Clarke, a little known Australian actor deserving more roles) proves to be all the more disorienting.

Interestingly enough, there are odd moments of unexpected yet contextualised humour too. Jessica Chastain kicking back after a hard day’s work, sipping on a beer but with her burka still on is an amusing sight to behold, while another moment in which two female operatives message one another online like schoolgirls prior to a drop off feels pleasantly light-hearted, considering it precedes the tragic Camp Chapman attack.

Which brings us to the raid on Bin Laden’s hideout compound in Abbottabad, the film’s climax of which we inevitably know the outcome, yet somehow Bigelow manages to keep us gripped and guessing throughout. A combination of spooky night vision and eerie silence intermitted with rattling gunshots and deafening explosions, it’s already a contender for the year’s most thrilling action sequence, made all the more suspenseful every time a white-gowned individual is glimpsed darting behind the US Navy SEALs prowling the compound.      

Anchoring us into the whole proceedings is Jessica Chastain’s Maya. Allegedly based on a real life CIA operative who dedicated almost ten years of her life to locate the world’s most wanted man, we first meet her as a wincing novice during the afore-mentioned torture scene and watch her gradually evolve into a relentless, imperturbable woman who is not afraid to stand up to the male competition and zones in on her target like a shark. A bit like Zero Dark Thirty’s astute director, then.

4/5