The Sisters Brothers

29 May 2019 1 Comment

by Debra Manskey in Movie Review, Writing Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Sisters Brothers (2018)

Directed by Jacques Audiard

As many of you know, I watch a lot of movies. Wherever possible, I go to a real, live, honest-to-goodness cinema but, living in Hobart, I’m often reduced to relying on streaming services, Vimeo and even YouTube for some classics. My average when studying is a film per day, though now I’m having a break and winter has arrived, that number will possibly rise. If you’re interested, I’ve recently joined Letterboxd the social media site for film nerds, and you can follow my profile to see what I’m currently watching.

Naturally, I don’t write a review for everything I see (many are re-watches) though I often take notes – even in the dark! Over the coming weeks, I hope to catch up with reviews of the movies I’ve seen in recent months. But there are some films that just stay with me and refuse to be shaken off. This is one of them.

I saw The Sisters Brothers back in March at a one-off screening for the French Film Festival at the State Cinema and I’ve only just found time to write a review. To say I enjoyed it is a gross oversimplification. This revisionist western is a complex, often humorous and sometimes ponderous examination of masculinity. Based on the novel by Canadian writer Patrick deWitt, this is French director Jacques Audiard’s first English language feature. I haven’t read the book, so I’m basing this solely on what I’ve seen on screen and the notes I made that night. Shot in Romania, Spain and France with a predominantly European crew, the film has a distinctly different feel to the greater majority of contemporary westerns, which I found very appealing.

The story is basically a four-handed tale and concerns brothers Eli and Charlie Sisters, (John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix) who are two assassins in pursuit of Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed) a chemist who befriends the detective John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal). The characters are all unique, human, flawed and about as far from standard western male stereotypes as one could get. Phoenix is on point with his self-destructive Charlie, Gyllenhaal and Ahmed are excellent as the precise detective and idealistic chemist – but the beating heart of the movie is John C. Reilly as the contemplative and essentially tender-hearted Eli, living in a world of brutality and casual violence.

I found the humour at times a little wearing and that didn’t do the narrative pacing any favours, dragging it down in my opinion. It has occurred to me that this is such a male-centric film, that the jokes aren’t aimed at me but I need to re-watch it to see if my initial reactions hold up.

Nevertheless, this a sumptuously shot film that is gritty, dark and at times, quite disturbing. For me, a middle aged woman, I found it a fascinating essay on masculinity and what it means to be a man, beyond all the standard cinematic tropes. I have mixed feelings about so many aspects of this film, but I appreciate the incredibly high quality film making at its core and will always champion an attempt to do something different and subvert expectations. It really looks like a big blockbuster Hollywood western – but has a script that is more suited to an indie, film festival audience. I understand it got a very limited release in Australia (one night only in Hobart) but it’s scheduled for a DVD release in Australia in mid-June 2019. I will certainly be getting a copy for my home library.

Velvet Buzzsaw

06 Feb 2019 2 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Movie Review, Writing Tags: , , , ,

I’ve been physically and emotionally preoccupied with bushfires the last few weeks, with friends, their properties, native wildlife and some of the most beautiful places on the planet destroyed or under threat. The air quality’s been pretty horrendous even here in the city – what must it be for firefighters and local residents? – and I’ve had messages from friends in northern climes, who are telling me of snow in Cornwall UK and the horrific Polar Vortex that’s caused so much chaos in Canada and the US. So please forgive me for not keeping up here. In truth, I’ve been neglectful of writing anything.

Velvet Buzzsaw 2019

Written & directed by Dan Gilroy.

This very stylish thriller is another Netflix production and I’ve read very mixed reviews since it dropped here at the start of February. Written and directed by Dan Gilroy, this reunites him with Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo (Gilroy’s wife), who all previously worked on Nightcrawler (2014). Where that film was a dark, noirish beast that centered on some very dubious characters, Velvet Buzzsaw is drenched in the sunlit and very elite world of the LA art market. Russo and Gyllenhaal lead a very impressive ensemble cast in this bitchy satire on the fine art world but there are definitely problems. Jake Gyllenhaal always impresses but I found his portrayal of the art critic at times almost a caricature of a young Andy Warhol.

Russo is entirely convincing as a former punk who’s made a fortune out of other people’s talent, Toni Collette is delightful as the bitchy Gretchen and John Malkovitch is hilarious as the artist battling to create while sober. But at the core of the film is the mesmerising and often downright creepy artwork of Vetril Dease, which is stolen after his death by Josephina (Zawe Ashton), an art agent working for Rhodora Haze (Russo). As people start to make a lot of money out of this work, strange things start happening – I think you get the picture.

While I mostly enjoyed the movie (it was a welcome relief from the real world) I found it quite clunky at times and think it could’ve done with a very different edit to lift some sections. Also, I felt this was a film caught between two genres, not quite being a full-blown satire and never being close to a true horror movie.

Some of the death scenes are quite inventive and there are moments of definite creepiness, but I know this won’t satisfy horror fans.

Fun while it lasted – but quite forgettable.