Review No.183: Ruby Sparks

Plot: Paul Dano stars as Calvin a depressed novelist who is trying to live up to the success he achieved with his first book that he wrote when he was still at school. Calvin's therapist suggests he write something terrible about a girl who likes his do and he creates Ruby Sparks eventually falling in love with her. Calvin freaks out when Ruby appears in his kitchen one day however he discovers that he has made her real and can actually write her to do whatever he wants. Instead of making use of this power he believes that Ruby is the perfect woman so vows not to change him however soon his depressive nature starts to stifle her and she begins to spend less time with him. After a painful visit to his mother's house Ruby starts to change her opinion of Calvin which in turn makes him consider whether or not he should change her personality as he has that power.

Positives: Writer and star Zoe Kazan's script is an inventive piece that has lots of fun jokes and gets very dark towards the end. The use of light and shade in the cinematography is fairly well used while the film's score is also quite pleasant. Paul Dano is excellent in this leading role as he really encapsulates the misanthropic Calvin and by the end we learn why he can't maintain a relationship as well as why he has writer's block. The film also boasts a great supporting cast including Steve Coogan as a sleazy author and Annette Bening and Antonio Banderas as Calvin's mother and her partner with the pair both playing kooky to the max. Kazan herself is also great as the upbeat Zoe who is eventually dragged down by Calvin's moods and she also plays it excellently during the aforementioned darker scenes.

Negatives: Ultimately the film doesn't have the courage of its convictions as Calvin comes good and I thought the ending absolutely sucked as I personally thought it could've been left more open-ended. The film also takes a while to get going and I found it incredibly difficult to connect with Calvin before Ruby came along.

Verdict: An inventive film that has a fairly mainstream ending and while I enjoyed it I expected more from the team behind Little Miss Sunshine so for that reason Ruby Sparks receives a 7.5/10

Review No.99: Black Gold

Ever since Ridley Scott reinvented the old-school epic with Gladiator many people have tried to recreate his success with differing results from Oliver Stone's Alexander to Scott's own Kingdom of Heaven. The latest director to try his hand at creating an epic of sorts is Jean-Jacques Annaud, most famous for helming Seven Years in Tibet, who has presented a tale of feuding Sultans in 1920s Arabia entitled Black Gold. The film is based around a border dispute between Antonio Banderas' Emir Nesib and Mark Strong's Sultan Amar although they briefly settle their conflict as insurance Nesib takes both of Amar's sons. As this is the 1920s it's not long before the Texans turn up wanting to drill for oil in Nesib's area so he allows them to using the money to modernise the area building up hospitals, schools and a library where Amar's son Auda, now played by Tahir Rahim, works as he is a bookish chap. Nesib later wants to unite the two families so has Auda marry his daughter Leyla, played by Freida Pinto, both then journey to try and broker a deal with Amar. Amar's feelings about the oil are different to that of his rival and he feels that the land shouldn't be modernised in the way that Nesib has done this eventually leads to  a conflict with Auda leading several of the rival tribes to rebel against Nesib. Essentially this sees a man torn between two father figures, between being a scholar or a warrior and also fighting against the father of his true love.

From watching Black Gold it seemed to me that Annaud's main goal was to make everything look as dazzling as possible and to an extent he's done this. The decision to film primarily in Tunisia and Qatar makes the whole thing seem realistic while Jean-Marie Dreujou's cinematography perfectly captures the thrilling battle sequences in the latter part of the film as does the multi-coloured robes worn by the main characters. The epics of old also had memorable scores and while James Horner does a good job for me it doesn't live up to the greatness of Maurice Jarre's Lawrence of Arabia script. The main problem with Black Gold though is that it's just a bit dull with long speeches about border disputes and family traditions all I really wanted to see was more of the characters riding around on their horses or Freida Pinto's pretty smile. While I'm on the cast the only person who really made an impression on me was Mark Strong who is ever-reliable here as the long-in-the-tooth Amar he plays it just right as opposed to Banderas who goes a bit pantomime whenever he's on screen. Pinto and Riz Ahmed make good accounts of themselves whenever they're on screen however I was a bit disappointed by Rahim's contribution, especially when we remind ourselves how good he was in A Prophet, but maybe that's the fault of the script not creating a better role for him to sink his teeth into. Black Gold by no means is a poorly made film however it suffers from long speeches and tired clichés while having some cast members who don't try hard enough and some that go way over the top.

Verdict: Despite some decent cinematography and a hefty performance from Strong most of Black Gold is fairly dull and for that reason I'll only give it 5/10

Review No.60: Haywire

Basing a film around somebody who has never acted before is a tricky business even when that person, in this Gina Carano, has been surrounded by lights and camera before. Carano is best known as a fighter in the mixed martial arts field but was also a former American Gladiator and in Steven Soderbergh's Haywire she makes her debut as government contractor Mallory Kane. Haywire's story is a simple one as Mallory is sent to Barcelona to rescue an Asian journalist before being convinced by her boss/former lover Kenneth, played by Ewan McGregor, to take up another assignment posing as Michael Fassbender's wife. It is only when on this assignment that she realises she has been set-up and Fassbender is out to kill her thankfully she realises this in the nick of time and is able to over-power him. Returning to the States she is confronted by another old colleague, played by Chaning Tatum, before commandeering the car of a customer at the diner she was in. After telling him her story she ends up at her father's house where she demands the truth from Kenneth which is a conspiracy that also involves Michael Douglas' government agent and his contact played by Antonio Banderas.

It's fair to say the best parts of Haywire are when Carano is kicking ass or plotting her next move however Soderbergh seems set to make her act as much as possible. The two best scenes in Haywire, in my opinion, are when Mallory is tussling with Fassbender in an Irish hotel or when he is wrestling with McGregor on a Mexican beach. For me the problem here is that Soderbergh has over-complicated the plot meaning that we must learn of half of a dozen characters in the first fifteen minutes of the film and I really struggled to work out who was on who's side. It seemed that a variety of reliable actors such as McGregor, Fassbender, Banderas and Douglas had been drafted in to act alongside the amateur however I feel the majority of them are wasted in underwritten role. Carano herself isn't an awful actress just a little cold so while I understood her need for revenge she never really made me care if she lived or died. What should've happened with Haywire is a lot more set piece, such a when Mallory is trying to evade the Irish police, and a lot less of her hanging around waiting for stuff to happen. This being a Soderbergh film at least everything is styled to perfection there's some great cinematography, the score suits the mood perfectly and each new location is welcomed in so at least we know where we are even if we're not quite sure what's going on. I think Carano was often utilised in the right way but I have to say I'd expected more from the film seeing as who was involved and at the end of the day Haywire seemed to me to be a film that should've been simple but a lot more complicated by an over-abundance of character and too many cooks spoiling the broth.

Verdict: Slick and stylish in places with some great set-pieces it's a shame that Soderbergh peppered his film with far too many different characters so for that reason I can only award this 6/10